Re: ECB

[Richard Stallman]

    >Do you think that this feature should be integrated into Emacs at the
    >C level?

    Hmm, depends. IMO Emacs is not really designed for having a
    window-layout where some windows should be permanent and should
    always contain some certain stuff (like the special
    ECB-browsing-tree-buffers/windows) and the rest of the windows
    which can be deleted and created by the user (like the
    editing-area of ECB).

Not now; that's why I'm suggesting to change it.

    BTW: If you remember we had already a short discussion about the
    adding a mechanism (flag) to the c-level so a window can be marked
    to be excluded from delete-other-window... please apologize but i
    haven't still found enough time to implement this.

I remembered having that discussion, but not who I had discussed it
with.  It sounds like ECB has implemented the same feature (more or
less) at Lisp level.  Do you agree that C level would be the best
place to put it?


    Example: ECB advices the `display-buffer' so it displays all
    "compilation"-buffers (buffers which fulfill criterias a user has
    defined so they should be displayed in the compilation-output-window
    of ECB) in the compilation-output-window of ECB (an optional but then
    permanent window at the bottom of the ecb-frame), all special
    ecb-buffers in the assigned ecb-window and for the rest of the buffers
    it uses the edit-area of the ecb-frame as if this area would be the
    whole frame. Works save and like a charm but needs for this a big and
    - i admit - complex advice. So IMHO it would make sense for some
    mechanisms (needed by ECB) to be included in the Emacs-core because
    IMHO it is always better - regardless of the code-quality and the
    saveness of an advive of an internal central function like
    display-buffer - to implement this in the emacs-core instead with an
    advice.

That's exactly what I think.  In fact, we want to avoid defining any
advice in Emacs itself.

                        The question is if it should be at the c-level
                        or at the lisp-level?

It should be implemented within display-buffer, which means, in C
level.

To rewrite display-buffer in Lisp is a separate idea.  I'm not against
it, if someone wants to do it.  Not right now; now our focus is on getting
a release to work.  But if you want to do that, it would be ok, and
we could install that just before installing ECB.