Re: Window configurations

[grischka]

martin rudalics wrote:
>  > One mistake is to cater for windows on the same level of generality  as you
>  > obviously do for low level lisp.  Of course you want functions "cons" etc.
>  > to allow generation of arbitrarily complex lisp structures, but it cannot
>  > be the point of "split-window" to generate arbitrarily complex
>  > window-trees,
>
> I'm not sure whether I get your point.  But windows are first class
> citizens in the Elisp world and `split-window' must be allowed to create
> arbitrarily complex window trees on an arbitrarily complex machine.

Which does not mean that any feature can be allowed to use split-window
as it happens to think.

>  > (and anyway the result of some such is not a "window-configuration" but at
>  > most a "window-state").
>
> In my book a "window configuration" is "the state of all windows".

In my book configuration is rules and state is result from their application
(together with other conditions).  Conflating the both will just produce a
classical chicken & egg problem.

>  > The other mistake is _not_ to cater for windows on the same level of
>  > _reliability_ as you obviously do for low level lisp.  "Cons" doesn't work
>  > "intuitively" in the sense of "heuristically", and one has to accept that
>  > there is no other "intuitively right window" to display some buffer except
>  > the exactly one defined location where the user wants to see it.
>
> The question which buffer I want to display must be solved heuristically
> because it's too complex to analyze the intentions of each and every
> Emacs user (and possibly provide the necessary customizations) in Elisp.

There is no need to guess intentions if users were allowed to express them
(and emacs was disallowed to ignore them).

> The heuristics should guess the "intuitively right window" in a way
> which can be roughly measured by the number of postings criticizing its
> implementation.

You want "display-buffer" query the emacs bug tracker? ;)

>  > And that is actually what "window-configuration" can only mean:  A way to
>  > define windows for particular content (aka. buffers) _before_ the window
>  > exists physically.
>
> IIUC that's what packages like ECB do.  And ECB leaves it to Emacs and
> its users to modify the configuration/state of the edit area.
>
>  >  From then on it is easy, you just need to tell "display-buffer" to use
>  > that
>  > window rsp. to generate it if it doesn't yet exist.
>
> martin

--- grischka