Usage examples of dedicated windows and popup frames?

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

Hi all,

my probably most frequently used emacs keys are `ESC ESC ESC' and `C-x
b' which somehow suggests that I might want to improve my window/frame
management.

Since lately I've read of many people on this list that they are using
dedicated windows, dedicated minibuffer frames, and popup frames. I've
briefly checked the docs.  Well, that explains all variables and
functions, but it doesn't really help finding some appealing overall
configuration that just works for me.

As a self-experiment, I've just evaluated

  (setq pop-up-frames 'graphic-only
        display-buffer-reuse-frames t)

in *scratch* to try out something completely different from the default
behavior.  And basically I it's not that bad.  But after using it for an
hour, I have more than 10 open emacs frames now.  Most of them were
opened for showing completion possibilities, but after I've finished
completion they became useless.  It would be great if those would be
closed automagically...

Long story short: it would be nice if some people with non-standard
window/frame settings could share and briefly explain their
configuration.  I'm very interested.

And maybe it's a good idea to ship emacs with some predefined setups
users can easily try out and then extend to find one that suits them
best, for example, the current default window oriented configuration, a
more frame oriented configuration, and a frame oriented configuration
with a dedicated minibuffer frame, too.

Bye,
Tassilo