Re: virtual space?

["Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@elta.co.il>]

> From: "Michael Durland" <mdurland@ix.netcom.com>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 01:26:00 GMT
> >
> > Emacs has an optional feature to cause it pop up a new frame
> > (``window'' in your parlance) to display comlpetion results.  See the
> > documentation of the variable `special-display-buffer-names'.  Why
> > isn't this sufficient?
> 
> Is there a way to show these spawned special frames without an actual
> "frame" around them?  That is, just the window contents with no title bar,
> no resizing border, etc.  Just the actual contents inside the frame?

I don't understand why is this an issue (can you explain?), but it
sounds like the default Emacs behavior, whereby the possible
completions are shown in a window in the same frame, should satisfy
your needs, since there's no new frame borders involved.  What am I
missing?

> That way it could appear on top of the existing frame and have the
> appearance that it is part of the same frame.

A separate window popped by Emacs by default in the same frame is, in
fact, part of the same frame.  What's wrong with that?

> I found how to specify some properties
> of the frame, like position and size, but I didn't figure out how to specify
> system properties like what "style" the spawned frame has.

What do you mean by the frame's ``style''?

> Another example where this is useful is to have a virtual ruler that
> floats around over the text.  This can be used to measure how wide
> strings are.

You can easily find out the length of a string in Emacs without any
ruler.

> I have found this feature useful in the past.

Any other useful applications of the ruler, besides string length?

> With a real frame, the "frame stuff" gets in the way of the actual
> contents, which in this case would be numbers with tick marks as
> periods.

It is possible, at least in principle, to have frames without borders
(that's how Emacs creates tooltips, a.k.a. ``balloon help''), if that
is important, although I don't think you can do that now in Emacs.