Re: GNU Emacs raison d'etre

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 18.05.2020 00:17, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> I wonder how it works out in practice: I like the idea of the minibuffer
> being "near point" rather than at the bottom of my screen, but at the
> same time I don't like the minibuffer hiding text "near point".

It doesn't actually follows point, at least in this solution. The 
position is more or less fixed, albeit, if the position is in the center 
of the frame, it would be closer to point on average.

The idea is to rather "capture the gaze".

> Another issue is that it only applies to actual minibuffer use, so it
> doesn't affect Isearch nor echo-area messages, but for me a significant
> part of the problem of having the minibuffer "all the way down" is that
> I don't see echo messages either (i.e. it's not just the minibuffer
> per-se but all uses of the mini-window).

I think that conflation of the minibuffer and the echo area is one of 
oldest problems in Emacs. That's not to say that we can't do anything 
similar for the echo area.

Someone should experiment with that as well: for instance, they could be 
displayed like desktop notifications. Stacked, on the right side of the 
screen (top or bottom). I don't have particular experience with that, 
"solving" the minibuffer seems more urgent.

Another idea: show the messages at the bottom of the minibuffer pop-up, 
on a separate line, perhaps with a different background, when the 
minibuffer is active. Otherwise, continue showing them at the bottom of 
the frame.