Re: compilation-goto-locus, pop-up-windows, same-window-regexps

[Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org>]

"Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com> writes:

> It sounds to me that you are seeking what GNOME/sawfish calls a
> `group'.  As far as I know, GNU Emacs does not handle groups.  (I have
> never used groups.)

> What you want is an additional kind of undo.  A `within the current
> type of group' undo:  not an undo that pops the buffer pointer from
> the current stack, but one that pops the stack of `significant buffers
> for the current context'.

> Challenging ideas.

It depends.  I gave a rather long rationale for my wishes, and I gave
a rather short solution: Let pop-up-windows do what it is supposed to
do -- prevent window splitting -- and we'll see how it goes and
perhaps other things need fixing thereafter.

Certainly groups and other fancy window manipulation might be
interesting, but just as you said -- I never used them.  I never use
such fancy stuff because it is hard to form accurate mental models,
and it is hard to design good user interfaces for these things.

Back when I used an ordinary window manager, I used frames to "group"
stuff.  I had a Gnus frame, an IRC frame, a programming frame, etc.

Now I switched to a very limited window manager -- essentially it
looks like a big terminal emulater.  There is just one (big) frame
visible at all times.  So I started to use Emacs window managing to
lay out the things the way I want them, and I mangled the Gnus window
management configuration such that Gnus presents me with one buffer
only, and does not touch the existing window configuration (there
still is the occasional problem, but that is stuff that can be fixed
as well, and I will report that to the Gnus mailing list).

What I'm trying to say is that we should not let ourselves get
distracted by possible neat solutions to my problem, when a very
simple and limited solution might solve my problem.  Perhaps other
people have other problems, and it might be nice to solve them, too,
but they did not submit bug reports (yet), and so we can postpone that
for later.  All IMHO, of course.

Alex.