this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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How to make all temp buffers open in specific window? (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by Tibblediggins@alien.top to c/emacs
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In a 2 window setup, is there a way to make all temporary popup buffers (help, compile, occur, etc) always open in a specific window?

For example, I have a left and right window. I do most of my work in the left window. When I lookup something in help it opens in the right window which is what I want.

But let's say I'm in the right window already and look up help, it will open in the left window. Is there a way to make it always open in the right?

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[–] JDRiverRun@alien.top 2 points 1 year ago

Not sure your definition of easy, but this kind of setup (and much more) is certainly possible: https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/demystifying-emacs-window-manager

[–] nv-elisp@alien.top 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Customize display-buffer-alist to your liking. There is an Emacs manual section devoted to it as well as several online tutorials.

[–] 7890yuiop@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

The display-buffer-reuse-mode-window action may be convenient for this use-case.

Many of your modes-of-interest will be derivatives of special-mode so you may (or may not) find that specifying that as a catch-all is particularly useful.

[–] olikn@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I am looking for something similar, I also do my edits in the left window, if I open a read-only buffer (man page, help, helpfull, info ...) I would prefer it will always open on the right side. I can't help you, but I hope someone else can.

[–] Tibblediggins@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you all for tips. My elisp skills are pretty poor so I'm having trouble figuring out how to make this work, even copying examples online. For example:

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist '("*help*"
                                     (display-buffer-reuse-window)
                                     (display-buffer-in-side-window . ((side . right)
                                                                       (window-width . 0.5)))))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist '("*info*"
                                     (display-buffer-reuse-window)
                                     (display-buffer-in-side-window . ((side . right)
                                                                       (window-width . 0.5)))))

With that in my init.el, if I open emacs and look up "help" it creates a new window on the right, which is the default behavior so I can't say for sure if the code is doing anything. If I select a link in the help file (like the manual) that opens "info" it opens it back in the left window.

What am I doing wrong here?