From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Drew Adams" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: RE: `auto-dim-other-windows` -- scrutiny invited Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2013 14:55:00 -0700 Message-ID: <4CAC0625449A4494938E732EF60CC5E3@us.oracle.com> References: <87ehersl1c.fsf@wanadoo.es> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1365112522 15210 80.91.229.3 (4 Apr 2013 21:55:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2013 21:55:22 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: "'Steven Degutis'" Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Apr 04 23:55:50 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UNs8G-0003TS-U7 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 04 Apr 2013 23:55:45 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60004 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UNs7s-0000nf-4T for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:55:20 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:58783) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UNs7g-0000nX-OZ for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:55:10 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UNs7f-00064W-CW for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:55:08 -0400 Original-Received: from aserp1040.oracle.com ([141.146.126.69]:29848) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UNs7f-00063f-6y for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:55:07 -0400 Original-Received: from ucsinet22.oracle.com (ucsinet22.oracle.com [156.151.31.94]) by aserp1040.oracle.com (Sentrion-MTA-4.3.1/Sentrion-MTA-4.3.1) with ESMTP id r34Lt3F0010559 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=OK); Thu, 4 Apr 2013 21:55:05 GMT Original-Received: from acsmt357.oracle.com (acsmt357.oracle.com [141.146.40.157]) by ucsinet22.oracle.com (8.14.4+Sun/8.14.4) with ESMTP id r34Lt29K021300 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Thu, 4 Apr 2013 21:55:02 GMT Original-Received: from abhmt112.oracle.com (abhmt112.oracle.com [141.146.116.64]) by acsmt357.oracle.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id r34Lt2A6001198; Thu, 4 Apr 2013 16:55:02 -0500 Original-Received: from dradamslap1 (/130.35.178.8) by default (Oracle Beehive Gateway v4.0) with ESMTP ; Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:55:01 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 In-Reply-To: Thread-Index: Ac4wue1hhmapV3n2S+qsx1LOEe7bHgAvVoZg X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 X-Source-IP: ucsinet22.oracle.com [156.151.31.94] X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.4.x-2.6.x [generic] X-Received-From: 141.146.126.69 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:89999 Archived-At: FWIW, and ignore this if it doesn't help - 1. I suggest you start by asking yourself *why* you want to distinguish the selected window (or all the non-selected windows, which amounts to the same thing). If the answer it just to *make clear which* window is selected, then dimming any of them is not a great approach, IMHO. If that's the only reason then presumably you would want all of the windows to remain easy to read etc. If the answer is just to more or less remove the non-selected windows from your attention, then I'd suggest that there are better approaches, including perhaps scaling their text smaller. IOW, if you do not really care whether the non-selected windows are as readable as the selected window, and you do not want to be distracted by them but would prefer to more or less ignore them temporarily, then why bother wasting so much screen real estate on them? Taking up screen space with intentionally dimmed windows makes little sense to me. 2. Out of the box, text scaling does not free up any screen real estate: when you shrink text its window does not also shrink. But if you use library `face-remap+.el' then non-nil option `text-scale-resize-window' shrinks the window along with the text. However, just resizing a window in conjunction with text scaling affects only the vertical space, not the horizontal space. And shrinking one window grows the adjacent windows, so in itself it is not a solution to try shrinking all the non-selected windows. The heights and widths of their frames would not change. 3. But you can also thumbify a frame, which is similar but it does shrink the frame. It shrinks the text of each of its windows (so you would not want to thumbify the frame that has the selected window). You can set the thumbifying shrink factor so that thumbified frames are anything from tiny (active desktop icons, in essence) to only slightly smaller than normal. When you thumbify a frame, it puts its windows and text in the background in terms of your attention - and it frees up screen space. But the windows and text are still there and still usable. Depending on the shrink factor you choose, this effect is more or less pronounced. Even very tiny frames whose text is unreadable can be effective in terms of searching text or monitoring process output. IOW, for some Emacs operations you do not actually need to be able to read the text clearly. (Ordinary frame iconifying is of course another solution to the attention focus/distraction problem, albeit a somewhat coarse one. It too gets less interesting frames out of the way. But you cannot see their content or interact with it.) http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/download/face-remap%2b.el http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/download/thumb-frm.el Doc/screenshot of thumbified frames: http://www.emacswiki.org/FisheyeWithThumbs