Preserving window layout

Preserving window layout

[Matthew Calhoun]

Hello,

I'm trying to set up Emacs in a way that I think will be nice for 
coding: I have a single full-screen frame with two large side-by-side 
windows for editing source files and whatnot, and below these two 
there's a third window with a shell in it, which takes up the entire 
frame width. It looks something like this:

-----------------------
|          |          |
|          |          |
|  source  |  source  |
|          |          |
|          |          |
-----------------------
|        shell        |
-----------------------

Sort of a poor man's IDE. The problem is, when I do something like 
command-apropos it wreaks havoc on my nice little environment - the 
shell buffer grows to take up half of the frame, and the *Apropos* 
buffer has taken the place of *shell*.

What I would like do is keep this basic layout the same, viewing 
various buffers only in the top two windows, and keeping the shell 
window undisturbed at the bottom. So, is there some way to "lock" a 
screen layout, or at least a single window? And can I prevent my shell 
buffer from being replaced by other buffers?

In case it matters, I'm using Emacs 21.1.1 in Mac OS X's Terminal 
application.

Thanks,
Matt

Re: Preserving window layout

[Glyn Millington]

Matthew Calhoun <calhounm@mac.com> writes:

> What I would like do is keep this basic layout the same, viewing
> various buffers only in the top two windows, and keeping the shell
> window undisturbed at the bottom. So, is there some way to "lock" a
> screen layout, or at least a single window? And can I prevent my shell
> buffer from being replaced by other buffers?

I wonder if winring.el will give you what you need

Take a look at 

http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/~stephen/emacs/ell.html

in general and the winring package in particular ;-)

hth



Glyn

Re: Preserving window layout

[Galen Boyer]

On Sat, 7 Jun 2003, calhounm@mac.com wrote:

> The problem is, when I do something like command-apropos it wreaks
> havoc on my nice little environment - the shell buffer grows to take
> up half of the frame, and the *Apropos* buffer has taken the place of
> *shell*.

Try this.

(setq special-display-buffer-names
      '(("*Apropos*"
	 (top . 5)
	 (left . 100)
	 (width . 90)
	 (height . 50)
	 (background-color . "gray60")
	 (menu-bar-lines . 0))
	"*Backtrace*" "*Input History*" "*Occur*" "*grep*"
	))

The above may need a tweak, I cut it out of alot more buffers being
referenced.  I think you can play with this and get it to your liking. 
-- 
Galen deForest Boyer
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Re: Preserving window layout

[Johan Bockgård]

Matthew Calhoun <calhounm@mac.com> writes:

> Sort of a poor man's IDE. The problem is, when I do something like
> command-apropos it wreaks havoc on my nice little environment - the
> shell buffer grows to take up half of the frame, and the *Apropos*
> buffer has taken the place of *shell*.

Another approach

,----[ C-h k C-x r w ]
| C-x r w runs the command window-configuration-to-register
|    which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `register'.
| (window-configuration-to-register REGISTER &optional ARG)
| 
| Store the window configuration of the selected frame in register REGISTER.
| Use C-x r j to restore the configuration.
| Argument is a character, naming the register.
`----

(info "(emacs)RegConfig")

You might want to bind those to some nice keys.

Also see

(info "(emacs)Windows")
(info "(emacs)Window Convenience")

-- 
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the
day they start making vacuum cleaners. -- Ernst Jan Plugge

Re: Preserving window layout

[Jason Earl]

Matthew Calhoun <calhounm@mac.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to set up Emacs in a way that I think will be nice for
> coding: I have a single full-screen frame with two large side-by-side
> windows for editing source files and whatnot, and below these two
> there's a third window with a shell in it, which takes up the entire
> frame width. It looks something like this:
>
> -----------------------
> |          |          |
> |          |          |
> |  source  |  source  |
> |          |          |
> |          |          |
> -----------------------
> |        shell        |
> -----------------------
>
> Sort of a poor man's IDE. The problem is, when I do something like
> command-apropos it wreaks havoc on my nice little environment - the
> shell buffer grows to take up half of the frame, and the *Apropos*
> buffer has taken the place of *shell*.
>
> What I would like do is keep this basic layout the same, viewing
> various buffers only in the top two windows, and keeping the shell
> window undisturbed at the bottom. So, is there some way to "lock" a
> screen layout, or at least a single window? And can I prevent my shell
> buffer from being replaced by other buffers?
>
> In case it matters, I'm using Emacs 21.1.1 in Mac OS X's Terminal
> application.

I don't know anything about Mac OS X, but I quite often do something
like this:


  +-----------+	 +-----------+ +--+
  |           |	 |           | |  |
  |           |	 |           | |  |
  |  source   |	 |   docs    | |  |   speedbar
  |           |	 |           | |  |   ----
  |           |	 |           | | <+--/ 	  
  |           |	 |           | |  |	 
  |           |	 |           | |  |	 
  +-----------+	 |           | |  |	 
  |           |	 |           | |  |	 
  |           |	 |           | |  |	 
  |  shell    |	 |           | |  |	 
  |           |	 |           | |  |	 
  +-----------+	 +-----------+ +--+

Basically this is two normal frames, one of them with a small shell
window and a speed bar.  It does pretty much everything your setup
does, but it's a bit easier to maintain.  It takes a fair amount of
screen real estate, but so does your setup.

Jason