RE: Method to hide minibuffer

[Drew Adams]

> you can confine it to a frame you don't show:
> 
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5079466/hide-emacs-echo-area-during-inactivity

Yes, it's possible to do things like use a separate
minibuffer frame, and then make that frame invisible
or transparent (alpha) or lowered in the stacking
order - and then bring it back normally when you
are prompted for minibuffer input.

But you _really_ do NOT want to do that, OP.  One
good reason is that the same real estate is used
for the echo area: messages to you.  And messages
to you include prompts for non-minibuffer input.

Consider just these two uses of the echo area, for
instance: Isearch (it does NOT use the minibuffer,
even though that's not obvious) and prompts to read
input other than minibuffer input.

The latter includes prompts when reading a character,
such as is done by `y-or-n-p' and `query-replace*'.

Any user interaction that makes use of the echo area
will be lost (not seen) if you hide that screen real
estate.