I just read Mickey’s wonderful article on window management, and has given me the push I need to take control over my emacs windows/frames. I have an idea of what I will configure; maximum of two windows per frame, and if is my portrait frame split horizontally and split vertically for my landscape frame, plus some additional config for Magit. Before I take the plunge, I wanted to quickly reach out to see what other people have done for their configs to get some ideas. Figure might also be good to collect a few different configurations of window configs for people interested.

Some configs I have found on the way and will update with any suggestions people have:

  • Karthink’s config, good integration with the popper package
  • emacs-pure - has some display-buffer-alist settings for magit which are of interest to me, as the built in magit methods for handling new frames isn’t exactly what I want.

​

Any recommendations, please feel free to share them.

​

  • skyler544@fediverser.communick.devBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago
    (add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*sly-mrepl"
               (display-buffer-at-bottom)
               (window-height . 12)))
(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*Calendar*"
               (display-buffer-at-bottom)))
(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*shell:"
               (display-buffer-below-selected)
               (window-height . 12)))
(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\magit:"
               (display-buffer-same-window)))
(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*Man"
               (display-buffer-same-window)))
(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*Help"
               (display-buffer-same-window)))
(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*helpful"
               (display-buffer-same-window)))
      • egstatsml@fediverser.communick.devOPBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Awesome thanks for sharing. I have a note for emacs-run-command to comeback and check it out, but hadn’t come across shell-command-x.el. Will have to check them out.

        Do you notice any wierd behaviour with Magit? I have just been going through the documentation about how Magit spawns/reuses their own frames, and was wondering if playing with display-buffer-alist would get in the way of how Magit wants to do it.

        • skyler544@fediverser.communick.devBEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I think that preferences for display-buffer-alist will depend on each user’s workflow. With my rule it will pop up magit-status in the currently active window, then split to show logs, diffs, etc. I don’t normally use more than two windows per frame, so it’s not too bad if it messes things up, but I haven’t noticed it doing that. If it does do something weird, I just use winner-undo until I get back to where I was. For this you have to have (winner-mode) somewhere in your config or start it manually I guess.

          For instance, if you had two windows in a vertical split like A | B with point in A, then run magit-status, A will show magit and B won’t change unless you run something like magit-log. Pressing q in the log window will restore B to what it was showing before.

          Changing this behavior is probably possible, but I’m satisfied with this so far.

  • unhammer@fediverser.communick.devBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Mine is just the default nil. I don’t use any of the packages. But I prefer magit to be fullscreen and to restore back to where I was on quit:

      (setq magit-display-buffer-function 'magit-display-buffer-fullframe-status-topleft-v1)
  (setq magit-bury-buffer-function 'magit-restore-window-configuration)
    • egstatsml@fediverser.communick.devOPBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I tried Magit full-screen but It wasnt restoring my previous windows. I didn’t know about the bury buffer function so this helps me out a lot. Thanks!

  • centzon400@fediverser.communick.devBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago
    (add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*e?shell\\*"
               (display-buffer-in-side-window)
               (side . bottom)
               (slot . -1) ;; -1 == L  0 == Mid 1 == R
               (window-height . 0.33) ;; take 2/3 on bottom left
               (window-parameters
                (no-delete-other-windows . nil))))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*\\(Backtrace\\|Compile-log\\|Messages\\|Warnings\\)\\*"
               (display-buffer-in-side-window)
               (side . bottom)
               (slot . 0)
               (window-height . 0.33)
               (window-parameters
                (no-delete-other-windows . nil))))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*\\([Hh]elp\\|Command History\\|command-log\\)\\*"
               (display-buffer-in-side-window)
               (side . right)
               (slot . 0)
               (window-width . 80)
               (window-parameters
                (no-delete-other-windows . nil))))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*TeX errors\\*"
               (display-buffer-in-side-window)
               (side . bottom)
               (slot . 3)
               (window-height . shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer)
               (dedicated . t)))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*TeX Help\\*"
               (display-buffer-in-side-window)
               (side . bottom)
               (slot . 4)
               (window-height . shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer)
               (dedicated . t)))