opening buffers in particular windows?

opening buffers in particular windows?

[Brendan Miller]

A number of emacs commands open buffers in a window other than the
current one. For instance, hitting o in dired, or M-x man.

For dired, this works ok if I only have two windows open, but I often
have 3, it and it picks the window I *don't* want it to open in. Say,
I open a source file from dired, the source opens up in the small
window I was using for ansi-term, instead of the big window I was
using to edit source in. Then I have to rearrange or resize
immediately.

M-x man is actually kind of annoying because I usually want it to open
in the window that I run the command in.

Is there any way to control the window that buffers select to open in
better? Maybe make one window a target for certain types of new
buffers?

Thanks,
Brendan

Re: opening buffers in particular windows?

[Pawel]

Brendan Miller <catphive@catphive.net> writes:

> M-x man is actually kind of annoying because I usually want it to open
> in the window that I run the command in.
>

good point.
the first thing I did after learning elisp a bit was to open buffer list
(C-x b) in current window. Solution is specific to buffer list only, but
the question remains for other cases.

best regards

Re: opening buffers in particular windows?

[Brendan Miller]

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Pawel <mafeusek@gmail.com> wrote:
> Brendan Miller <catphive@catphive.net> writes:
>
>> M-x man is actually kind of annoying because I usually want it to open
>> in the window that I run the command in.
>>
>
> good point.
> the first thing I did after learning elisp a bit was to open buffer list
> (C-x b) in current window. Solution is specific to buffer list only, but
> the question remains for other cases.
>
> best regards
>

I think that now that monitors have gotten so big, it's common to have
3 or 4 windows open, whereas in the past most emacs users probably had
2 max. For this reason most of the "open in other window" type
commands now behave very unpredictably with 3 or more windows.

I'm currently learning elisp so I can fix things like this for myself.
Guidance on how C-x o, dired's o, C-x b, and M-x man decide which of n
windows is the "other window" would be helpful. Hopefully they all
just call some "other window" function that I can hook to customize
its behavior.

Brendan

Re: opening buffers in particular windows?

[martin rudalics]

 > >> M-x man is actually kind of annoying because I usually want it to open
 > >> in the window that I run the command in.

If you want that behavior, it might help to add man buffers to either
`same-window-buffer-names' or `same-window-regexps'

 > I think that now that monitors have gotten so big, it's common to have
 > 3 or 4 windows open, whereas in the past most emacs users probably had
 > 2 max. For this reason most of the "open in other window" type
 > commands now behave very unpredictably with 3 or more windows.

Those commands based on `display-buffer' should behave predictably.  If
they don't please report that as a bug.

 > I'm currently learning elisp so I can fix things like this for myself.
 > Guidance on how C-x o, dired's o, C-x b, and M-x man decide which of n
 > windows is the "other window" would be helpful. Hopefully they all
 > just call some "other window" function that I can hook to customize
 > its behavior.

If the same-window-... based behavior fails, `display-buffer' based
functions try to "reuse", in this order

(1) the "least recently used" window,

(2) some visible window on another frame showing the buffer already,

(3) the largest visible window,

(4) some window showing the buffer already,

(5) the largest window.

martin