Re: Infrastructural complexity.

[Thomas Lord]

On Sun, 2009-07-26 at 19:45 +0200, martin rudalics wrote:
> > They are frames.  Frames are modified to have a
>  > `parent' slot which may be nil or may be a
>  > frame that itself has a nil `parent'.

> Then you have to rewrite the frame management code in addition to the
> window management code.  For example, the semantics of both `next-frame'
> and `next-window' would change.

It might be desirable - though probably not
necessary - to *tweak* `next-frame' in a 
small way.

Why would you change `next-window'?  Is it
that you want C-x o to jump from edit area
windows to control panels and back again?
Maybe `next-frame', maybe a new command.
Leaving `next-window' alone means that the
edit area can act like "Emacs classic" with
the control panels serving as a new way
to invoke commands that effect the 
window and buffer currently selected in 
the edit area.




>  >>  decide how they are allowed to
>  >> tile a frame
>  >
>  > Yes.  I have one possibility that seems to cover
>  > all of the use cases people commonly want, but
>  > there are other ways to do it, certainly.
>  >
>  >> (which would be mostly a copy of the window making,
>  >> splitting, and deleting code)
>  >
>  > Maybe.  There are other possibilities.
>  > It could also be done with something like
>  > the layout engines found in some GUI
>  > toolkits.
> 
> These would have to be rewritten and adapted accordingly.

It shouldn't be very much code.


>  > It's not clear that much or any changes to
>  > window code would be needed.  Perhaps
>  > some changes to `display-buffer';  perhaps
>  > some changes to `buffer-list' that kind
>  > of thing.  These would be ways for an elisp
>  > program to limit which buffers are likely to
>  > be displayed in framelets that are used as control
>  > panels.
> 
> `buffer-list' is not part of the window management code.  But what would
> `window-frame' return? 


The containing frame(let), just as it does
now.   Control panel modes - for use in 
buffers displayed in control panels - can
use a new function in some cases:

    (defun window-parent-frame (w)
       (if (frame-parent (window-frame w))
            (frame-parent (window-frame w))
          (window-frame w)))



>  What would the `frame-root-window' of the
> `window-frame' of a window be?  Or `selected-frame'?

The root window of the frame, just as it is
now.   Control panel modes could use, in some
cases, (frame-root-window (window-parent-frame))

-t






> martin