Re: window-size constraints

[martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>]

 > I think we should go in the direction of "constraints", which would take
 > the form of Elisp functions.  Every configuration change would
 > correspond to adding&removing constraints, and then try and solve the
 > resulting CSP.  Constraints would come with priorities so that in the
 > case the CSP has no solution, we can choose which constraint(s)
 > to break, or alternatively, the satisfaction of a constraint would not be
 > boolean, so the goal would be to try and maximize the satisfaction.

We'd still have to decide whether and how to honor buffer-local values
of variables like `window-min-height' or `split-height-threshold'.

 > While writing the balance-window-area code, I went through several
 > iterations, and some of them just tried to move window-boundaries in
 > arbitrary ways, then measure the "balance-factor" (basically, the
 > window-area variance) and little by little move towards
 > a local optimium.
 >
 > Also, I have some uninstalled code that uses
 > window-configuration-change-hook to preserve the
 > `balance-window-area'ness of a frame when windows are created/deleted.

When the window configuration changes Emacs often tries to preserve
proportionally the size of non-fixed size windows as faithfully as
possible.  How would `balance-windows-area' help here?  Doesn't it try
to give all windows the same size?  The doc-string isn't of much help
here :-(