Re: Minibuffer positioned at a location other than the bottom of the frame?

[John Yates <john@yates-sheets.org>]

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​​The OP suggested a dynamic positioning of the minibuffer. That would be a
significant change in the UI and as Eli points out would present many
aspects that would need to be worked out.

A little over a year ago I broached a more modest change in this thread:​​

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-10/msg00859.html

There I raised the notion of (optionally) moving the modeline to the top of
each window and positioning the minibuffer to the top of the frame.

Screen technology keeps​,​ evolving enabling ever larger screens with ever
more pixels. At the time ​that ​I initiated that thread I owned a 3​0​"
(diagonal) 2560x1600 monitor. Since that time my employer has provided me a
43" 3840x2160 monster (HxW = 26"x38"). This is a thing of beauty but sadly
a miserable experience when emacs ​tries​ to manage the whole screen as ​a
single frame. Yes, I can have many full height windows side by side showing
me an unprecedented amount from each buffer. ​And​ I ​can ​cope with the
38" screen width by ​collecting the two or three windows of most current
interest side by side at the center of the frame. But _very_ often buffer
content fails to fill ​its​ window. This means that I cannot scroll ​that​
content to the middle of the screen. This leaves buffer content often
displayed nearly 2 feet removed from its mode line and the minibuffer.

Trying to work in this configuration is essentially impossible. ​My current
compromise is to waste 2/3 of the screen​'s pixels​, creating a 1/3 height,
full width frame.

Interestingly, I feel much less disoriented using the ​full screen height
with a tiling window manager (awesome) displaying full height web pages and
GUI desktop productivity apps. My conclusion is ​​that ​some ​aspects of
the emacs UI ​(​rooted​ at least partially ​in considerations of repainting
early glass TTYs​)​ could stand to be reassessed.  For instance,
positioning the modeline at the top of our windows would align emacs with
the now nearly universal UI idiom that positions a titlebar at the top of a
window.

/john​

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