Why does Emacs make it difficult for me to have two frames open the same buffer?

Why does Emacs make it difficult for me to have two frames open the same buffer?

[Kevin Tran]

I have 2 frames. I switch the buffer in first frame to buffer A. When I try to switch the buffer in the second frame to buffer A, Emacs brings the first frame forward. What I want is to open buffer A in both frames. Is there a setting that makes Emacs bring the other frame forward when buffer A is already opened in it?

RE: Why does Emacs make it difficult for me to have two frames open thesame buffer?

[Drew Adams]

> I have 2 frames. I switch the buffer in first frame to buffer 
> A. When I try to switch the buffer in the second frame to 
> buffer A, Emacs brings the first frame forward. What I want 
> is to open buffer A in both frames. Is there a setting that 
> makes Emacs bring the other frame forward when buffer A is 
> already opened in it?

You don't give enough info to understand your situation.  It doesn't sound like
you are starting from `emacs -Q', so I suspect some setting in your init file or
your `custom-file' is determining the behavior you see.

Try from `emacs -Q', and if you still see the problem, give us a recipe, step by
step.  If not, then try to narrow down your init file to discover what is
causing that behavior.

When I do this, I see no such behavior:

emacs -Q

`C-x 5 2' to get another frame.

`C-x C-f foo.el' in one frame.

`C-x b f TAB RET' in the other frame.

Re: Why does Emacs make it difficult for me to have two frames open thesame buffer?

[Kevin Tran]

I didn't know how else to explain what I was seeing. It turns out that this is a feature of ido-mode. The defaults for "Ido Default Buffer Method" and "Ido Default File Method" are "Raise frame if already shown".

On Apr 13, 2012, at 2:34 PM, Drew Adams wrote:

>> I have 2 frames. I switch the buffer in first frame to buffer 
>> A. When I try to switch the buffer in the second frame to 
>> buffer A, Emacs brings the first frame forward. What I want 
>> is to open buffer A in both frames. Is there a setting that 
>> makes Emacs bring the other frame forward when buffer A is 
>> already opened in it?
> 
> You don't give enough info to understand your situation.  It doesn't sound like
> you are starting from `emacs -Q', so I suspect some setting in your init file or
> your `custom-file' is determining the behavior you see.
> 
> Try from `emacs -Q', and if you still see the problem, give us a recipe, step by
> step.  If not, then try to narrow down your init file to discover what is
> causing that behavior.
> 
> When I do this, I see no such behavior:
> 
> emacs -Q
> 
> `C-x 5 2' to get another frame.
> 
> `C-x C-f foo.el' in one frame.
> 
> `C-x b f TAB RET' in the other frame.
> 
> 

Re: Why does Emacs make it difficult for me to have two frames open the same buffer?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Kevin Tran <hekevintran@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:04:49 -0700
> 
> I have 2 frames. I switch the buffer in first frame to buffer A. When I try to switch the buffer in the second frame to buffer A, Emacs brings the first frame forward.

Doesn't happen to me.  What is your version of Emacs, and does this
happen in "emacs -Q"?  If "emacs -Q" behaves like you expect, then you
already have some customization that results in this behavior, and you
need to find which customization is that.  Perhaps you customized
display-buffer-reuse-frames, for example.