Any way to bring minibuffer and modeline to the top?

Any way to bring minibuffer and modeline to the top?

[Ken Hori]

Is there any way to move the modeline, and the minibuffer line,
of a frame from the bottom to the top?

Re: Any way to bring minibuffer and modeline to the top?

[Lennart Borgman]

No, if you do not want to rewrite the display engine in Emacs.

On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 7:27 AM, Ken Hori <fplemma@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there any way to move the modeline, and the minibuffer line,
> of a frame from the bottom to the top?
>
>

Re: Any way to bring minibuffer and modeline to the top?

[Stephen Berman]

On Sun, 30 May 2010 11:54:13 +0200 Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> wrote:

> No, if you do not want to rewrite the display engine in Emacs.
>
> On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 7:27 AM, Ken Hori <fplemma@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there any way to move the modeline, and the minibuffer line,
>> of a frame from the bottom to the top?

I think we're currently stuck with the minibuffer at the bottom, but for
the modeline you could try this:

(setq-default header-line-format mode-line-format)
(setq-default mode-line-format nil)

Steve Berman

Using Emacs on small-display devices

[Ilya Zakharevich]

> On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 7:27 AM, Ken Hori <fplemma@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there any way to move the modeline, and the minibuffer line,
>> of a frame from the bottom to the top?

On 2010-05-30, Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> wrote:
> No, if you do not want to rewrite the display engine in Emacs.

I think the important things are the following abilities:

 a) separate the message area and minibuffer;

 b) overlay the message area and modeline (message replaces file name?);

 c) put a "pseudo-menubar" icon on modeline: clicking on it pops up a
    popup-equivalent of menubar (i.e., vertical vs horizontal layout);

 c') put modeline on top, since it is where one expects such icons;

 d) ability to make a minibuffer overlaid "on top of" modeline, so it
    does not take place when not needed.

 e) ability to make emacs full-screen (no border, no taskbar visible);

 f) ability to switch between two layouts (one as above, one "usual")
    by one keypress.

This way one would be able to use 4 more lines for editing (crucial on
smaller average screens of today devices).

I think some of these must be trivial even today, some may require a
minor rewrite of the display engine...

Hope this helps,
Ilya

Re: Using Emacs on small-display devices

[Stefan Monnier]

> I think the important things are the following abilities:
>  a) separate the message area and minibuffer;

I don't think you can do that nowadays, although you get partway there
by defadvicing `message' and then using something like tooltips for the
echo area.

>  b) overlay the message area and modeline (message replaces file name?);

You can try to tweak the previous advice so it doesn't use a tooltip but
instead it just places the message into a variable that's displayed in
the mode-line.  Not sure how well that would work.

>  c) put a "pseudo-menubar" icon on modeline: clicking on it pops up a
>     popup-equivalent of menubar (i.e., vertical vs horizontal layout);

That can be done fairly easily and cleanly (the mode-line already has
some menus when you click for example on the major mode name).
The "full menu bar, with different layout" is already available on
C-mouse-3 by default, so you'd just have to bind it to a mode-line button.

>  c') put modeline on top, since it is where one expects such icons;

Can't do it right without major surgery, but can fake it as mentioned by
someone else by (setq-default header-line-format mode-line-format) and
(setq-default mode-line-format nil).  That will conflict with other uses
of the header-line, tho.

>  d) ability to make a minibuffer overlaid "on top of" modeline, so it
>     does not take place when not needed.

This one seems difficult to do.  You may be able to kludge it somehow:
- make a frame without minibuffer.
- since this requires a minibuffer on some other frame, hide that other frame.
- try and hook into the commands that use a minibuffer so that they work
  by first creating a new window on the current frame and work in
  that window intead of working in "the minibuffer mini-window".
Probably won't be pretty.

>  e) ability to make emacs full-screen (no border, no taskbar visible);

I think we already support that cleanly, tho it depends on cooperation
from the WM, of course.

>  f) ability to switch between two layouts (one as above, one "usual")
>     by one keypress.

That's the easy part, of course.


        Stefan

Re: Using Emacs on small-display devices

[Ilya Zakharevich]

On 2010-05-30, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> I think the important things are the following abilities:
>>  a) separate the message area and minibuffer;

> I don't think you can do that nowadays, although you get partway there
> by defadvicing `message' and then using something like tooltips for the
> echo area.

Interesting...  Is the C code sanitized enough so that messaging from
it would be adviced too?

>>  c) put a "pseudo-menubar" icon on modeline: clicking on it pops up a
>>     popup-equivalent of menubar (i.e., vertical vs horizontal layout);
>
> That can be done fairly easily and cleanly (the mode-line already has
> some menus when you click for example on the major mode name).
> The "full menu bar, with different layout" is already available on
> C-mouse-3 by default, so you'd just have to bind it to a mode-line button.

Good, I somehow forgot about this popup!

>>  d) ability to make a minibuffer overlaid "on top of" modeline, so it
>>     does not take place when not needed.
>
> This one seems difficult to do.

Thinking about it more: minibuffer is ALREADY of variable height.  The
default is 1.  What I propose is essentially making the default height 0...

>>  e) ability to make emacs full-screen (no border, no taskbar visible);

> I think we already support that cleanly, tho it depends on cooperation
> from the WM, of course.

Is it bound to a keypress?  F11?  ;-)

Thanks,
Ilya

Re: Using Emacs on small-display devices

[Ilya Zakharevich]

On 2010-06-01, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>>>> e) ability to make emacs full-screen (no border, no taskbar visible);
>>> I think we already support that cleanly, tho it depends on cooperation
>>> from the WM, of course.
>> Is it bound to a keypress?  F11?  ;-)
>
> No.  You have to make your own command (which just calls
> set-frame-parameter, IIRC) and bind it yourself, currently.

Let me rephrase my question then: WHICH parameters, to which values?
(Let's suppose we care about Windows only - so that application has
complete control over how it looks like.)

Thanks,
Ilya

Re: Using Emacs on small-display devices

[Stefan Monnier]

> Let me rephrase my question then: WHICH parameters, to which values?

If I did not write it, it's because I didn't know it.
So I did what you didn't do: C-h i m elisp RET m frame paramters RET and
looked around.  The answer is in "29.3.3.3 Size Parameters"


        Stefan

Re: Using Emacs on small-display devices

[Ilya Zakharevich]

On 2010-06-02, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> Let me rephrase my question then: WHICH parameters, to which values?
>
> If I did not write it, it's because I didn't know it.
> So I did what you didn't do: C-h i m elisp RET m frame paramters RET and
> looked around.  The answer is in "29.3.3.3 Size Parameters"

Doing this in my 21.4.1....  Nothing relevant...

Logging into a machine with 23.2, and rechecking...  Still nothing
relevant...

Sorry, but I cannot judge your advice as helping a bit.  I still have
no info how the positions are counted: from "outside of the window
frame", or "inside the window frame", or from "outside edge of the
screen frame", or "inside edge of the screen frame" (what is called
"workspace" sometimes - the screen minus all the "keep visible"
toolbars)...

(Moreover, according to 23.2 docs, there is something fishy with using
negative offsets - which may be needed with some combinations of the
answers to the questions above.

  [Let me remind you: what I want is positioning of the "inside edge
   of the window frame" over the "outside edge of the screen".  My FF
   does it on F11; Acroread on ^-L.]

  [And I do not care about "sizes" in pixel - they have very little to
   do with widget layout in presence of scrollbars and other ornaments
   (not even speaking about variable fonts.  I want sizing in
   pixels...]

Yours,
Ilya

Re: Using Emacs on small-display devices

[Stefan Monnier]

>>> Let me rephrase my question then: WHICH parameters, to which values?
>> If I did not write it, it's because I didn't know it.
>> So I did what you didn't do: C-h i m elisp RET m frame paramters RET and
>> looked around.  The answer is in "29.3.3.3 Size Parameters"
> Doing this in my 21.4.1....  Nothing relevant...

That parameter didn't exist.

> Logging into a machine with 23.2, and rechecking...  Still nothing
> relevant...

It's there in "29.3.3.3 Size Parameters":

`fullscreen'
     Specify that width, height or both shall be maximized.  The value
     `fullwidth' specifies that width shall be as wide as possible.
     The value `fullheight' specifies that height shall be as tall as
     possible.  The value `fullboth' specifies that both the width and
     the height shall be set to the size of the screen.  The value
     `maximized' specifies that the frame shall be maximized.  The
     difference between `maximized' and `fullboth' is that the former
     still has window manager decorations while the latter really
     covers the whole screen.


-- Stefan