Re: Minibuffer positioned at a location other than the bottom of the frame?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2017 11:26:13 +0100
> From: martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>
> CC: zhenya1007@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
>  >> There I raised the notion of (optionally) moving the modeline to the top of each window and positioning the
>  >> minibuffer to the top of the frame.
>  >
>  > This should be much easier, see
>  >
>  >    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-10/msg00895.html
>  >
>  > and followups.
> 
> I doubt that "Positioning the minibuffer to the top of the frame" would
> be "much easier"

"Much easier" than positioning it dynamically below the selected
window, or some other dynamic positioning.  I'm sure you will agree.

> When Emacs enlarges the minibuffer window it then has
> to move all windows beneath down by the number of lines the minibuffer
> window has been enlarged.

Why "all"? why not just the next window below the minibuffer?  That's
what we do now: we resize only the window immediately above the
minibuffer.  Right?

> To not make these windows' texts move down
> accordingly (which would constitute a very unpleasent visual experience)
> we would have to try to change these windows' start positions and
> restore them accordingly when shrinking the minibuffer window back.

That's probably true, but we need to redisplay that window anyway, so
we can choose a different window-start while we are at that.

> Obviously, with point near the top of the window or varying line heights
> such an attempt might become very tricky or even impossible.

I don't see why it would be impossible.  And in any case, this will be
an opt-in feature, so those who don't like the result will not use it.

> Putting the minibuffer window below some arbitrary (maybe even internal)
> window of a frame would not run into such difficulties.

I'm okay with that as well, if someone figures out how to implement
it.