3

I can make a buffer dedicated to a frame using the following snippet I got from other posts

(defun toggle-window-dedicated ()
  "Toggle whether the current active window is dedicated or not"
  (interactive)
  (message
   (if (let (window (get-buffer-window (current-buffer)))
     (set-window-dedicated-p window (not (window-dedicated-p window))))
       "Window '%s' is dedicated"
     "Window '%s' is normal")
   (current-buffer)))
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c d") 'toggle-window-dedicated)

Now from from another frame if I want to switch to the dedicated buffer then a copy of the buffer is opened. This is not the behavior I want. I want the focus to switch to the dedicated frame. The solution posted here : switch-to-buffer does not work.

Drew
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Kabira K
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1 Answers1

2

  1. If you want to switch to a buffer that is in another frame, use C-x 5 b, not C-x 4 b or C-x b. IOW, just use C-x 5 b for your buffer that is in a dedicated window, after using your toggle command.

  2. If you want to have certain buffers always be in dedicated windows in their own frames, you can use option special-display-buffer-names or special-display-regexps.

    For example, if you customize special-display-buffer-names to be (("foo.el")) then whenever you use a command that displays buffer foo.el it is shown in its own frame, in a dedicated window.

    (Personally, I set special-display-regexps to ("[ ]?[*][^*]+[*]"), so all buffers with names matching *...* are in dedicated windows in their own frames.)

    [If you prefer to mess with display-buffer-alist instead, be my guest and have fun. Emacs insists that special-display-(regexps|buffer-names) are obsolete. But thankfully they still work fine. Hopefully they will always continue to work fine.]

Drew
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  • :). Thanks for the C-x 5 b tip. I guess the question now is it possible to still use C-x b but it redirects to C-x 5 b for dedicated windows. I will look more into special-display-regexps (is a neat approach) and display-buffer-alist. My emacs fu is not up to par yet but hope to be their soon. – Kabira K Dec 30 '17 at 02:25
  • See #2 above. If you do that then `C-x b` automatically does what you are asking. – Drew Dec 30 '17 at 17:55
  • I know what I have to do but I don't how to achieve that in the code base above. Specifically, the elisp directive should be (setq special-display-buffer-names (current-buffer)) where current-buffer is obtained as shown in the above snippet. I need to figure how to chain this directive with the above snippet. – Kabira K Dec 30 '17 at 22:52
  • No. `current-buffer` returns a buffer, not a buffer name (a string). If you don't know the names of the buffers that you want to make `special-display` and you don't know even a pattern (regexp) that all of their names will match, then you cannot use the two options I mentioned. You'll perhaps have to wrestle with using `display-buffer-alist`. And what I said was not intended as something to do to your `toggle-*` code. It was a response to your question about to make a given buffer have a dedicated window and then switch to it in its own frame. – Drew Dec 31 '17 at 00:12