Hide extraneous buffers?

Hide extraneous buffers?

[BDB]

Is there any way to hide the *scratch*, Messages, Completions etc buffers?
I kill them but they always come back, and it's a pain to have to cycle
through 6 buffers when I only really have 3 meaningful ones open.

Re: Hide extraneous buffers?

[Mark Skilbeck]

On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 06:03:20PM +0000, BDB wrote:
> Is there any way to hide the *scratch*, Messages, Completions etc buffers?
> I kill them but they always come back, and it's a pain to have to cycle
> through 6 buffers when I only really have 3 meaningful ones open.

How exactly are you cycling through the buffers? If you know the names of 
the buffers, simply using C-x b with a partial-string can complete the buffer
name for you. If you don't know the names of the buffers you're interested in,
you're still going ot require casting an eye on the buffer list. Really, what's
3 extra buffer names? 

I admit, when I first started using emacs, those ephemeral buffers got in my 
way. Now I don't notice them.

- mgsk.

P.S. If you're not, you should probably be using IDO[1].

[1] http://emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractivelyDoThings

Re: Hide extraneous buffers?

[Mark Skilbeck]

Date: Fri, 18 May 2012 19:38:27 +0100
From: Mark Skilbeck <m@iammark.us>
To: BDB <noemail@yahoo.com>
Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Hide extraneous buffers?
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 06:03:20PM +0000, BDB wrote:
> Is there any way to hide the *scratch*, Messages, Completions etc buffers?
> I kill them but they always come back, and it's a pain to have to cycle
> through 6 buffers when I only really have 3 meaningful ones open.

How exactly are you cycling through the buffers? If you know the names of 
the buffers, simply using C-x b with a partial-string can complete the buffer
name for you. If you don't know the names of the buffers you're interested in,
you're still going ot require casting an eye on the buffer list. Really, what's
3 extra buffer names? 

I admit, when I first started using emacs, those ephemeral buffers got in my 
way. Now I don't notice them.

- mgsk.

P.S. If you're not, you should probably be using IDO[1].

[1] http://emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractivelyDoThings

Re: Hide extraneous buffers?

[BDB]

Mark Skilbeck wrote:
> How exactly are you cycling through the buffers? If you know the names of 
> the buffers, simply using C-x b with a partial-string can complete the buffer
> name for you. If you don't know the names of the buffers you're interested in,
> you're still going ot require casting an eye on the buffer list. Really,
> what's 3 extra buffer names? 

I like to use next-buffer bound to a key to cycle through the open buffers.
I googled around and found buffer-stack.el, which kind of minimizes the
problem by keeping the less recently used buffers at the bottom of the stack,
however it's still annoying to have the clutter around.  It's actually pretty
surprising nobody has made a fix for this.

> P.S. If you're not, you should probably be using IDO[1].

Thanks, but I'm not looking to change my behavior to fit emacs, but the
other way around :)

RE: Hide extraneous buffers?

[Drew Adams]

> Is there any way to hide the *scratch*, Messages, Completions 
> etc buffers? I kill them but they always come back, and it's
> a pain to have to cycle through 6 buffers when I only really
> have 3 meaningful ones open.

They are _supposed_ to "always come back". ;-)

You need to define clearly (for yourself) what you mean by the "meaningful"
ones.  Then you can build a filter that does what you want.

If buffer names `*...*' are not meaninful for you in general, then you can
exclude them all using a regexp.  In Icicles you can just set option
`icicle-buffer-no-match-regexp' to "\\`\\*[^*]+\\*\\'" to do that.

If you want to exclude only certain buffers, explicitly, then you can define a
predicate that tests membership in your blacklist.  In Icicles you can set set
option `icicle-buffer-predicate' to that predicate to filter them out.

If you want to include buffers of some kind but you want them to be at the end
of the list of choices, then you can define a sort function that does that.  In
Icicles you can do that by setting option `icicle-buffer-sort' to that function.

There are several such Icicles user options that control buffer-name completion.

You can also define one or more "buffer configurations", each of which is a set
of such option settings that defines a set of buffers to use (choose from). 

For example, I have one buffer config that includes all buffer names but sorts
those with names matching `*...*' last.  It looks like this:

("All, *...* Buffers Last"     ; Config name
 nil                           ; Match regexp (none)
 nil                           ; Don't-match regexp (none)
 nil                           ; Predicate (none)
 nil                           ; List of extra buffers to
                               ;  always include (none)
 icicle-buffer-sort-*...*-last ; Sort function
)

Sort function `icicle-buffer-*...*-last' is predefined, but you can roll your
own sort function - it's just a predicate that compares two buffer names
(strings).

You can have as many buffer configs as you like.  You can choose a different one
at any time using `M-x icicle-buffer-config'.  You can use command
`icicle-add-buffer-config' to define a config.

You don't need to use buffer configs, but they give you a quick way to pick a
whole set of option settings.

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Customization_and_General_Tips#toc95

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Global_Filters

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Support_for_Projects#toc6

Re: Hide extraneous buffers?

[Aaron Meurer]

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There are literally dozens of packages that manage buffers. If you Google
around, you're sure to find one that fits your needs. It sounds like you
just want to create a custom next-buffer that skips those buffers you don't
want.

Aaron Meurer

On Friday, May 18, 2012, BDB wrote:

> Mark Skilbeck wrote:
> > How exactly are you cycling through the buffers? If you know the names of
> > the buffers, simply using C-x b with a partial-string can complete the
> buffer
> > name for you. If you don't know the names of the buffers you're
> interested in,
> > you're still going ot require casting an eye on the buffer list. Really,
> > what's 3 extra buffer names?
>
> I like to use next-buffer bound to a key to cycle through the open buffers.
> I googled around and found buffer-stack.el, which kind of minimizes the
> problem by keeping the less recently used buffers at the bottom of the
> stack,
> however it's still annoying to have the clutter around.  It's actually
> pretty
> surprising nobody has made a fix for this.
>
> > P.S. If you're not, you should probably be using IDO[1].
>
> Thanks, but I'm not looking to change my behavior to fit emacs, but the
> other way around :)
>


-- 
Sent from my iPad.

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Re: Hide extraneous buffers?

[Xah Lee]

On May 18, 11:03 am, BDB <noem...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is there any way to hide the *scratch*, Messages, Completions etc buffers?
> I kill them but they always come back, and it's a pain to have to cycle
> through 6 buffers when I only really have 3 meaningful ones open.

you want {next-user-buffer, previous-user-buffer}. They are in
ergoemacs keybinding package, with key 【Ctrl+PageDown】,【Ctrl+PageUp】.

package here
http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html

or just these functions, at
http://xahlee.org/emacs/elisp_examples.html

not best implemented. criticism welcome.

 Xah