Re: xref and displaying locations in appropriate window or frame

[Ingo Lohmar]

This is an important discussion, and unfortunately I currently have too
little time left to follow the details.  So feel free to ignore this
message if it's besides the point.  But anyway...

On Mon, Jan 25 2016 19:18 (+0100), martin rudalics wrote:
> >   ------------
> > |   O |   X  |
> > |     |------|
> > |     |      |
> > |     |   T  |
> >   ------------

> This is no good layout for IDEs.  Source/code windows like O and T
> should always form a rectangle.  Auxiliary windows like X should be
> arranged around that rectangle.

FWIW, I love the overall direction of extending Emacs' IDE-related
facilities, *but* I do not think that it should strive to emulate all
their behavior, particularly not in this respect.  AFAICT, you have not
given any argument for *why* these should be guidelines for a window
layout, except that IDEs do it that way.

I regularly curse at the braindead window management of any IDE I have
had to work with so far.  Emacs shines in the flexibility with which I
can use all its features the way *I* want, and with the window layout I
deem suitable.  And for me, that's literally *never* a rectangular area
for source files.  In the above example, I find the displayed window
layout not only acceptable, but perfectly fine, just like
 ------------
|   T |   X  |
|     |------|
|     |      |
|     |   O  |
 ------------
would be fine for me (not as a result of the described workflow, but as
a layout resulting from any kind of workflow).

I think that it would be more useful if the present elaborate window
management would become more accessible (maybe it's only a matter of
documentation and a few variable settings) to fix a certain layout (or
layout-related guidelines like you described) *should the user want
that*.  Wouldn't this eliminate most of the need to code such decisions
into very general features like xref?

Ingo