RE: patch for optional inhibit of delete-other-windows(IDE feature)

[<klaus.berndl@sdm.de>]

klaus.berndl@sdm.de wrote:
> martin rudalics wrote:
>>  > Hmm, its a good starting point but not complete. Simply think of
>>  ECB > as a tool which wants to display some special windows beside
>>  an > "edit-area" whereas the former one are used to display
>>  informational > context stuff as parsed tags of the current buffer
>>  in the edit-area > or a file- and directory tree or a buffer-history
>>  or or or... > The latter one (the edit-area) should give the user
>>  the feeling as > if all windows of this edit-area would be the only
>>  windows in the > frame so all standard operations would act as if
>>  the edit-windows > would be the only windows in the frame...
>> 
>> Is the edit-area always a rectangle?  Can it be always created by
>> recursively subdividing an initial window?  Is there always at most
>> one edit-area?  Is there at most one edit-area in one and the same
>> frame?
> 
> To all questions: YES, except the recursively subdividing one: What do
> you mean exactly?
> 
> Currently the concept of ECB is:
> - Exactly one frame

sorry, misunderstandable: Must be: Exactly one frame *for ECB*
(of course there can be opened other coexistent frames used for
'not-ECB-editing' - all ECB-operations always affect the ECB-frame,
no other frame, all adviced are 100% save concerning this)

> - The is *always* exact ONE edit-area, which is always a rectangle
> - The special windows are located either at the left, at the right or
> on top of the edit area
> - the edit-arey can be subdivided in as many windows as possible
> 
>> 
>>  > Well, a window property for preventing other windows outside the
>>  > edit-area from being deleted or for a navigation only in the edit-
>>  > area by other-window would be a good starting point but its not
>> the  > end of the story: 
>> 
>> Can all operations you need be subdivided into whether they either
>> apply to all windows in the edit-area or to all windows outside the
>> edit-area?
> 
> Almost: Currently ECB needs three canonical window-lists:
> - full window list of the ECB-frame
> - all windows in the edit-area
> - all special ECB-windows
> - the compile-window (always displayed at bottom) when displayed
> canonical means: always the same sequence beginning from
> top/left-most, ie. the same order an unadviced version of
> `next-window' would walk through
> 
>> What mechanism do you use to access a window outside the
>> edit-area - do you suspend advices?
> 
> What do you mean with "access"?
> 
>> 
>>  > What about saving and later restoring the current window layout of
>>  the > edit-area (means only these windows inside the edit-area)
>>  without > affecting the layout of the special windows?
>> 
>> Do you also need to save and restore the layout of the non-edit-area?
>> Earlier I got the impression that the non-edit-area would be
>> immutable, so you could easily include it in the saved configuration.
> 
> Yes, currently the layout of the non-edit-area is immutable in this
> sense that redrawing the whole layout of the ECB-frame resizes the
> special windows back to their cusomized (via customize) sizes
> (can be absolute or - prefered - relative) whereas the sizes
> of the windows in the edit-area will be preserved by a layout-redraw,
> means the sizes the user has choosen by dragging modeline or what
> else... 
> 
>> Do you want the edit-area occasionally occupy the entire frame?
> 
> Yes, there is a command which allows to hide or to toggle visibility
> of the special windows - you can imagine that this needs complex and
> smart code-stuff to preserve the window-layout of the edit-area during
> that, but it works stable and error-less...
> IMHO temporarly hidding the special windows (ie. only the edit-area
> and all its windows are visible in the ECB-frame) is a very important
> feature of an IDE...
> 
>> 
>>  > And how to implement an option like
>>  > `ecb-layout-always-operate-in-edit-window'
>>  > (see docstring) without adviceing e.g. switch-to-buffer?  >
>>  > Just take a look at the docstring of the adviced
>>  `switch-to-buffer': > IMHO even with the new pins advices are needed
>>  to offer a smart and > convenient usage of an IDE like ECB...
>> 
>> Couldn't this be done with the help of a `switch-buffer-function'?
> 
> Yes, probably this would be possible!
> 
>> 
>>  > maybe i will find next weekend the needed time to write down a
>>  small > "functional reqirement specification" which core
>>  functionality would > be required by Emacs to rewrite ECB without a
>>  lot of its advices or > at least with much simpler advices...
>> 
>> If possible, please list also invariants which can be used to cut
>> down the overhead for providing these requirements.  Like "for any
>> frame the number of edit-areas it displays is zero or one".
> 
> yes, this was my intention - see above...
> 
> Klaus