Re: Should killing a help or compile buffer also delete the window?

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    I realize that you can't expect Emacs to know when you are done with a
    window unless you actually tell when.  The obvious way to tell when is
    to type `C-x 1' or `C-x 0', but this leaves the temporary buffer
    lingering, which makes me nervous.

You shouldn't consider these buffers a problem.

    I believe the Right Thing to do when the user kills a temporary buffer
    whose window was created as a side-effect of displaying the buffer in
    question is to restore the old window configuration.

That would definitely be wrong, since you might have changed something
about other windows in the mean time, and those changes should
definitely not be undone.

Finding "the right way" to remove a temporary buffer from the screen
is a very hard problem.  Nobody has ever proposed a solution that
really is right all the time, or even nearly all the time.  View mode
has tried to implement one, but it too has problems.

I don't want to spend time on thinking about it because I think it
is unlikely to get anywhere.