Re: "grouping" buffers

[Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org>]

Thank you Drew.

> On May 31, 2020, at 12:49, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:
> 
>> The utilities for manipulating frames and buffers within frames
>> are extremely limited.  There does not seem to be a way to "name" a
>> given frame, 
> 
> In `frame-cmds.el' you have command `rename-frame'.  Doc:

Sorry. The "default" utilities... I was only looking at the Emacs manual and at some command names I found with C-h.

Also, which-key shows that there are only very few C-x 5 prefixed commands. From a basic Emacs user’s point of view *that* is extremely limited.

Now that you mention the elisp manual, I checked it and found a few interesting things.

===============================
> Frame Titles

> Every frame has a name parameter; this serves as the default for the frame title which window systems typically display at the top of the frame. You can specify a name explicitly by setting the name frame property.

I don't know how to "set the name frame property". But there is probably a place in the elisp manual that says how to do that.

I think there should be a command that does that in frame.el.

> Normally you don’t specify the name explicitly,

That's quite a statement...

Maybe that should be "Normally Emacs computes..."

> and Emacs computes the frame name automatically based on a template stored in the variable frame-title-format. Emacs recomputes the name each time the frame is redisplayed.
===============================


>> or to call a frame to the front for example, like I'd call
>> a buffer to the front. 
> 
> By "call to the front", do you mean select the frame,
> giving it focus?  That's standard command `select-frame' or
> `select-frame-by-name' (or function `select-frame-set-focus').

When I call select-frame I get "command-execute: select-frame must be bound to an event with parameters" I don't know what that means.

Thanks to autocompletion I found about select-frame-by-name, and well, that worked fine, but as far as I can tell it's documented neither in the elisp manual nor in the emacs manual.

>> I can call it to the front or to the back, I can modify its
>> contents, I can rearrange the size and placement of each frame, etc.
> 
> Dunno what you mean by modify its contents.

Since in macos 1 frame = 1 window = 1 buffer, I can write something like "set contents of document (read "buffer") of front window (read "frame") to [whatever]"

But that was just an example of how frames are easy to manipulate and access out of the box in macos/applescript.

>> I can't seem to be able to do that in emacs for emacs frames.
> 
> Most frame changes are done ultimately with
> `modify-frame-parameters'.

I see. Maybe the section I quoted above could have an explicit link to that section. I mean, *all* sections in the Emacs manual should have a link to the relevant part of the Elisp manual...

> The Elisp manual is
> pretty good on this subject.  Start with node
> `Frames'.

Indeed.

Now it occurs to me that the tab feature that has been recently included in Emacs is easier to use out of the box than frames. For ex, by default I can call a menu where all the tabs are listed and I can select any one of them.

Although it is a different "menu", I just checked and F10 menu does have a frame item but it's buried inside the Buffer item.

In conclusion, I think there could be the following modifications to the system to improve usability:

Short term:
1) Assign a C-x 5 default keybinding to "select-frame-by-name"
2) Add a C-x 5 bound command for renaming a frame
3) Document select-frame-by-name in the 2 manuals
4) Move the F10 "Frames" menu item to the menu root

Medium term:
4) Systematically add links to the Elisp manual in the Emacs manual. To make sure that new users get a habit to checking the two.

I also need to understand why "select-frame" spits that error message...

Thank you again for the references.

-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com