Re: Allow controlling the effect of visibility on buffer switching

[Michael Welsh Duggan]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Thuna <thuna.cing@gmail.com>
>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2022 16:46:32 +0300
>> 
>> 
>> > Thanks, but why do we need such an option, given that we have
>> > buffer-change history, and so the visible buffers are usually just a
>> > couple of keystrokes away, like M-n?
>> 
>> If a buffer is open in multiple windows and one of these windows is
>> momentarily switched off of to look at something else, it is unintuitive
>> for buffer switching to default to a non-visible buffer instead of the
>> previously open buffer.  More often than not, a quick [C-x b RET] is,
>> and should be, sufficient for switching buffers.  Forcing the user to
>> actively choose the buffer they want introduces unnecessary burden which
>> can be a significant source of distraction over time.
>
> Forcing users to learn too many options is also not a very good idea,
> and we already have gobs of them.  So much so that even the head
> maintainers don't remember that many of them exist.
>
> So I'm asking whether "C-x b M-n RET" is not a good enough solution
> for this use case?  Does anyone else have an opinion?

I can say that I have wanted this behavior for a long time.  I do not
know that I would have considered "M-n" as an option to get this.  In
some limited tests that I have done, I have to hit "M-n" twice to get
the desired behavior.  I often have the same buffer open in multiple
frames so I can look at different parts of a buffer at the same time.  I
really want the buffer history for a window to not consider whether that
buffer is already visible in another frame (which, for me, might be on
another desktop entirely, and, as such, not really visible at all).

-- 
Michael Welsh Duggan
(md5i@md5i.com)