Re: display-buffer-overriding-action

[Chong Yidong]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>> - Commands like `C-x 5 b' or `info-other-window', which fall under the
>>   "explicit command" criterion and should override the defaults.
>
> This case depends:
> - historically, it has obeyed special-display-*, which would mean it
>   should obey d-b-alist as well.

Yeah, and I don't think it works very well as an exception (especially
since the special display only kicks in halfway through the window
selection process, after Emacs has tried to reuse a window).

If we want to keep this functionality, one way to do this would be to
make d-b-overriding-action into an alist as well, so that the actions
would come from (in order of priority)

  defcustom d-b-override-alist
  Lisp ACTION
  defcustom d-b-alist
  defvar d-b-default-action

with d-b-override-alist serving to replace special-display-*.

> - there are several other `other-window' cases where it's not nearly
>   as clear cut that the user really meant to override d-b-alist
>   (e.g. because it's the only command that has a convenient key
>   binding).

Which cases are you referring to?  Probably they ought to let-bind
d-b-default-action---or be changed to use display-buffer generically.

> Also you forgot the switch-to-buffer case, which uses the ACTION
> argument.

Based on names alone, it seems reasonable for switch-to-buffer,
switch-to-buffer-other-window, and switch-to-buffer-other-frame to all
behave the same way w.r.t. whether to override d-b-alist.  And you've
argued that s-t-b-other-window/frame should override d-b-alist.