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

[Roland Winkler]

On Sat Sep 15 2018 martin rudalics wrote:
> I think so.  No package should hijack this variable for its needs -
> it's entirely left to the user.  Packages like BBDB should only use
> the ACTION argument of 'display-buffer'.  

Thanks for the clarification!  So BBDB can use the ACTION argument
of 'display-buffer'.  Then it can also just provide a default for
ACTION which users can customize if they do not like it (via some
BBDB user variable).  Such a working default may help users that
want to customize this, but they feel overwhelmed by how this works.

> There is an example at the end of section 28.14.

Great, this was exactly what I was looking for.

> If you want it to say things differently, say more, or whether to
> put it somewhere else please tell us.

- As `display-buffer-alist' is the variable that users want to
  customize (hence: it is the entry point for people wanting to
  customize these things), I suggest that the description of
  `display-buffer-alist' in the elisp manual should include a link
  to the example in section 28.14.

- If I understand correctly, the example in Sec. 28.14 is slightly
  outdated: 

  window-height is an outdated alias for window-total-height
  and window-width is an outdated alias for window-body-width
  (as described in the node Window sizes of the elisp manual).

  This applies also to the description of
  `display-buffer-below-selected' and possibly other spots in the
  elisp manual.

- Is there a possibility to specify, using an ACTION, that a new
  window should take over a certain fraction of an existing window
  in a vertical split?  I believe this is a common case.  (I may be
  missing that this is described somewhere.)

(I thought that `display-buffer-alist' was only mentioned in the
elisp manual but not in the emacs manual.  Yet this was my mistake
due to my configuration of info-lookup that jumps straight to the
elisp manual.)