bug#3366: 23.0.94; doc of split-window-preferred-function, display-buffer, etc.

[martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>]

 > It seems (but I'm not sure this works for all cases) that what is
 > needed, to ensure that the same window as before is split, is to bind
 > `split-window-preferred-function' to something like this around calls
 > to `display-buffer':
 >
 > (lambda (w) (eq w (get-lru-window)))

The function you want might be

(defun split-window-22 (window)
   (let ((frame (window-frame window)))
     (or (and (setq window (get-largest-window frame t))
	     (window-full-width-p window)
	     (window-splittable-p window)
	     (split-window window))
	(and (setq window (get-lru-window frame t))
	     (window-splittable-p window)
	     (split-window window)))))

but I wouldn't rely on it.

 > Even if this function is not an exact recipe for all cases, something
 > like it should be mentioned, to help users get back the behavior that
 > existed before the new "smarter" behavior was introduced.  Preferably,
 > Emacs would itself provide a function that users could use here - a
 > function that would give precisely the pre-23 behavior in all cases.
 >
 > We should also make it clear that if you want the pre-23 behavior then
 > you will need to wrap not only explicit calls to `display-buffer' with
 > a `let' binding this way, but also calls to things such as
 > `with-output-to-temp-buffer'.

All people have to do is customize `split-window-preferred-function' to
that function.

martin