Re: Suggesting `frame-split-biggest-window' Re: customize location and shape of a new window in a frame

[martin rudalics]

>> It would be nice to have some sort of basic, prefabricated layouts
>> like the ones you sketched and choose from them (though a four window
>> layout with a different window in each corner of them frame would
>> still require to know whether the root window is a vertical or
>> horizontal combination).  But I have no good idea yet which layout
>> types are really needed and how to provide a suitable interface for
>> accessing them.  IIRC the "Emacs IDE" had provisions for them but I
>> have not heard from its developers for years.
>
> I thought this is what side windows are for? Maybe it would be tricky to
> save and restore whole-frame window configurations (though there are
> other tools for that), but side windows, combined perhaps with atomic
> windows, seem like the right tool for making rectangular compositions.
> The docs even say something about making Emacs look like a traditional
> IDE, etc...

The intention of side windows was to provide a framework for ECB (the
Emacs Code Browser) to embed such layouts without the need to advice
basic window functions.  Unfortunately, work on ECB seems to have
stalled a decade ago and nobody seems very interested in continuing
it.

martin