Re: Proposal: new default bindings for winner and windmove

[Arthur Miller]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
>> Cc: Daniel Colascione <dancol@dancol.org>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2021 22:20:22 +0200
>> 
>> > I'm actually surprised they have key bindings.  How frequently do you
>> > undo/redo window configuration changes?
>> You obviously don't need to call help functions as often as I :).
>
> That's not true: contrary to the popular belief, I don't keep all of
> Emacs in my memory.  I actually use Help functions very frequently,
I know I have seen you write this in other occasions, but some myths are
hard to debunk!

> which is why one of my frames always has a Help window open.  I simply
> don't delete that window, because I know I'll need it again in a
> moment.
You have reminded me of another from my todo wish-list. I wanted to
configure help to not open new window every time, because I also had
some thoughts of keeping it open all the time. Problem with help buffer
is that it pops up at unnexpected places, and I am looking all over the
place to see where did it popped now. I wanted it mostly for this reason
at same spot. winner-undo was a quick way to restore the state.

I have just added help, helpful, aproppos and few others to
display-buffer-alist and configured them to use same window.

>> It is handy to restore back windows after some help lookup, or after
>> something else opened a window that is left over. Compile log for
>> example. I have my binding on C-v u and C-v r, but it is mostly C-v
>> u I use form time to time.
>
> My solution to the "window configuration issue" is to keep several
> frames, one each for different tasks.  Each frame has windows arranged
> as appropriate for that task, and that configuration rarely if ever
> changes.  Of course, if someone has a lot of concurrent tasks and a
> screen that is not large enough, they can run out of screen estate, so
> scalability could be an issue.  But not for me.

I only use different frame for Gnus since it seems to expect its own
frame and I try to run everything else in another frame, two window pane
is my favourite. But maybe it is better to have a frame with a dedicated
layout for a task.

Thank you for sharing.