:ui popup

Tame sudden yet inevitable temporary windows

1. Description

This module provides a customizable popup window management system.

Not all windows are created equally. Some are less important. Some I want gone once they have served their purpose, like code output or a help buffer. Others I want to stick around, like a scratch buffer or org-capture popup.

More than that, popups ought to be the second class citizens of my editor; spawned off to the side, discarded with the push of a button (e.g. ESC or C-g), and easily restored if I want to see them again. Of course, this system should clean up after itself and kill off buffers I mark as transient.

1.2. Module flags

+all
Enable fallback rules to ensure all temporary/special buffers (whose name begins with a space or asterix) are treated as popups.
+defaults
Enable reasonable default popup rules for a variety of buffers.

1.3. Packages

This module doesn’t install any packages.

1.4. TODO Hacks

  • A lot of hacks to list…

2. Prerequisites

This module has no external prerequisites.

3. TODO Usage

This module has no usage documentation yet. Write some?

4. Configuration

4.1. set-popup-rule! and set-popup-rules!

This module has two functions for defining your own rules for popups:

# ⎘
(set-popup-rule! PREDICATE &key IGNORE ACTIONS SIDE SIZE WIDTH HEIGHT SLOT VSLOT TTL QUIT SELECT MODELINE AUTOSAVE PARAMETERS)
(set-popup-rules! &rest RULESETS)

PREDICATE is a predicate function or regexp string to match against the buffer’s name. You’ll find comprehensive documentation on the other keywords in set-popup-rule!’s docstring (<help> f set-popup-rule\!).

Popup rules end up in display-buffer-alist, which instructs display-buffer calls on how to set up windows for buffers that meet certain conditions. However, some plugins can avoid it entirely if they use set-buffer or switch-to-buffer, which don’t obey display-buffer-alist.

Multiple popup rules can be defined with set-popup-rules!:

# ⎘
(set-popup-rules!
 '(("^ \\*" :slot -1) ; fallback rule for special buffers
   ("^\\*" :select t)
   ("^\\*Completions" :slot -1 :ttl 0)
   ("^\\*\\(?:scratch\\|Messages\\)" :ttl t)
   ("^\\*Help" :slot -1 :size 0.2 :select t)
   ("^\\*doom:"
    :size 0.35 :select t :modeline t :quit t :ttl t)))

Omitted parameters in a set-popup-rules! will use the defaults set in +popup-defaults.

4.2. Disabling hidden mode-line in popups

By default, the mode-line is hidden in popups. To disable this, you can either:

  1. Change the default :modeline property in +popup-defaults:

    # ⎘
    ;; add to $DOOMDIR/config.el
(plist-put +popup-defaults :modeline t)

    A value of t will instruct popups to use the default mode-line. Any popup rule with a :modeline property can still override this.

  2. Completely disable management of the mode-line in popups:

    # ⎘
    ;; add to $DOOMDIR/config.el
(remove-hook '+popup-buffer-mode-hook #'+popup-set-modeline-on-enable-h)

5. TODO Troubleshooting

There are no known problems with this module. Report one?

6. Appendix

6.1. Commands

  • +popup/other (aliased to other-popup, bound to C-x p)
  • +popup/toggle
  • +popup/close
  • +popup/close-all
  • +popup/toggle
  • +popup/restore
  • +popup/raise

6.2. Library

  • Functions
    • +popup-window-p WINDOW
    • +popup-buffer-p BUFFER
    • +popup-buffer BUFFER &optional ALIST
    • +popup-parameter PARAMETER &optional WINDOW
    • +popup-parameter-fn PARAMETER &optional WINDOW
    • +popup-windows
  • Macros
    • without-popups!
    • save-popups!
  • Hooks
    • +popup-adjust-fringes-h
    • +popup|set-modeline
    • +popup-close-on-escape-h
    • +popup-cleanup-rules-h
  • Minor modes
    • +popup-mode
    • +popup-buffer-mode

6.3. Hacks

  • help-mode has been advised to follow file links in the buffer you were in before entering the popup, rather than in a new window.
  • wgrep buffers are advised to close themselves when aborting or committing changes.
  • persp-mode is advised to restore popup windows when loading a session from file.
  • Interactive calls to windmove-* commands (used by evil-window-* commands) will ignore the no-other-window window parameter, allowing you to switch to popup windows as if they’re ordinary windows.
  • balance-windows has been advised to close popups while it does its business, then restore them afterwards.
  • neotree advises balance-windows, which causes major slow-downs when paired with our balance-window advice, so we removes neotree’s advice.
  • org-mode is an ongoing (and huge) effort. It has a scorched-earth window management system I’m not fond of. ie. it kills all windows and monopolizes the frame. On top of that, it really likes to use switch-to-buffer for most of its buffer management, which completely bypasses display-buffer-alist. Some work has gone into reversing this.