Re: help-window-select and info-lookup-symbol

[martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>]

 >> A brute force
 >> approach (currently used by info or backtrace) simply restores W1 whe
 >> you press `q' which all so often drives me mad because it destroys the
 >> windows and window-buffer associations I have created in between.
 >
 > For the debugger it's IMO the best option.

When debugging an application which creates a new buffer I have to
create that buffer before running the application in order to see how it
gets filled.  Otherwise, the debugger won't let me see it for long.
Maybe I could show it in another frame, but I don't want to resize my
main frame in order to make another one visible.

 >> Now theoretically, I could restore W1 if and only if the configurations
 >> W2 and W3 are equal.  In practice, however, this approach often failed
 >> here.  Hence, I tried to base the comparison on a weaker predicate of
 >> equality which ignored the identities of buffers displayed in other
 >> windows and the relative sizes of windows.  I got it to work for help
 >> buffers but was not able to make it work realiably with info buffers.
 >
 > Comparing W2 and W3 per compare-window-configurations would probably
 > work as a start, but point should probably not be restored.

My info windows are sometimes open for a couple of minutes, mostly
because I'm to lazy to quit them.  Quitting them at last offers me an
interesting albeit chaotic view of my session's archeology.

 > (defun slime-close-popup-window ()
 >   (when slime-popup-restore-data
 >     (destructuring-bind (popup-window selected-window old-buffer)
 >         slime-popup-restore-data
 >       (bury-buffer)
 >       (when (eq popup-window (selected-window))
 >         (cond ((and (not old-buffer) (not (one-window-p)))
 >                (delete-window popup-window))
 >               ((and old-buffer (buffer-live-p old-buffer))
 >                (set-window-buffer popup-window old-buffer))))
 >       (when (window-live-p selected-window)
 >         (select-window selected-window)))
 >     (kill-local-variable 'slime-popup-restore-data)))
 >
 > popup-window is the window that displays the help content at W2.
 > selected-window was selected at W1.
 > old-buffer was the buffer associated with popup-window at W1.

How do you get the `old-buffer' and `popup-window' values in general?
By comparing window configurations before and after `display-buffer'?
My code included for every window a variable telling whether that window
was split off by `display-buffer' or which buffer the window displayed
before it was "used" by `display-buffer'.

I recall it proved very nasty to save the old buffer value when the
window is re-used again by `display-buffer' because I had to avoid that
a "valuable" non-help content buffer value would get overwritten by the
"uselss" value of a help-content buffer.

martin