Equake mode should be frame-local rather than buffer-local

[emacsomancer]

Since the equake-mode minor mode is set buffer-locally, two undesirable UX issues arise:

• when opening a non-equake buffer in an equake frame, the tab list disappears (which is rather inconvenient)
• when opening an equake buffer in a non-equake frame, the tab list appears

Perhaps equake-mode can be set frame-locally. Or else, some workaround can be put in place to toggle the buffer-local equake-mode based on frame properties/name.

Possibly utilising native tabs in Emacs (see https://gitlab.com/emacsomancer/equake/-/issues/14 ) could also be helpful in resolving this issue.

[emacsomancer]

In GitLab by @Lockywolf on Sep 1, 2021, 23:06

I initially thought about creating a separate "issue", but perhaps this one fits better.

I use find-file from equake to visit a file, and by default find-file uses the same frame, which is, obviously, at the time equake is used, the equake frame. I find this very inconvenient, I want my terminal frame to keep being the terminal frame.

I can use find-file-other-frame, obviously, but finding files is not the only thing that may need a separate frame.

[emacsomancer]

In GitLab by @Lockywolf on Sep 1, 2021, 23:07

mentioned in issue Lockywolf/linuxbugs-lwf#175

[emacsomancer]

What do you think the desired behaviour should be though? Or, put another way, what is the issue that you're facing precisely?

(a) Is it about keeping the tabs in the modeline?

(b) Is it about not opening anything in an Equake frame that's not a terminal?

I think this parent issue here is connected to (a), but not to (b).

And I'm not sure that (b) is exactly the behaviour that would be expected. So, if I pull up Yakuake, and run vi /etc/somefile.conf, then vi opens in Yakuake and until I close vi I can't get back to that terminal tab. (I think Equake is a bit more flexible here, since it's really just Emacs and so one can switch back and forth between terminal buffer and the opened file).

But this is Emacs, and so I imagine we could figure out some sort of optional setting to have a different behaviour. But I'm still not entirely sure what the desired behaviour for you would be. That any non-terminal things that one tries to open from an Equake frame spawn a new frame instead?

[emacsomancer]

In GitLab by @Lockywolf on Sep 2, 2021, 22:37

Well, (a), would be very nice, for sure! Maybe it would even solve my issue altogether.

With respect to (b)... let me be more specific. I am feeling some difference between "using external applications in equake" versus "using Emacs' own applications in equake".

When using vi, I think it is reasonable to expect vi to run in the same window, or maybe even pretend to be running in the same buffer (even though it is tacitly using term-mode instead), because that is how ordinary terminals behave.

However, when running find-file, or locate, that is not actually "running external programs", that is similar to using emacsclient, or emacsclient -c, or emacsclient --eval in a console, which would, generally, either create a new frame, or reuse an existing frame of Emacs.

I mean, I am not pretending that my opinion is objective here. It is just that I want equake to be that "dropdown console" from Quake, rather than "just one more frame of Emacs" or "just one more Terminal window".

[emacsomancer]

(a) is something I want to eventually solve. Since it potentially interacts with how tabs are handled, I've been sort of putting it off until I can evaluate whether using the new native Emacs tabs might be a better solution. (Also waiting to make sure that most users are likely on a version of Emacs that supports native tabs.)

For (b), I think this is partially workflow-specific. If I have Equake "open" and open up some file to edit in it, it's likely because I have something full-screen below Equake that I want to be able to see and so I don't want to spawn a new Emacs frame that obscures this. (Otherwise I'd just edit in a regular Emacs frame rather than in Equake.) (I'm not happy that my tabs disappear when I do this, as sometimes I'd like to still be able to switch tabs when editing in this way; thus one of the reasons I'd like to solve (a).)

But, it fully makes sense that one might want to keep non-terminal things out of an Equake frame. I'm investigating how this might be done. The underlying problem is that a lot of Equake's behaviour involves "tricking" Emacs to behave in non-standard ways. As would this.

I'm working on a potential solution for customising (b)-type behaviour. I'll try to get something pushed to an experimental branch soon.

[emacsomancer]

Ok, see the https://gitlab.com/emacsomancer/equake/-/tree/redirect-open-to-new-frame branch.

If you use this branch and set (setq equake-open-non-terminal-in-new-frame t), it should push all non-Equake buffers into a new frame.

Bug reports welcome.

[emacsomancer]

The equake-open-non-terminal-in-new-frame option is now pushed to the main branch, addressing @Lockywolf 's issue to do with opening non-Equake buffers inside an Equake frame.

But the original issue remains open.

[emacsomancer]

In GitLab by @Lockywolf on Sep 13, 2021, 02:17

Great, thanks!

[emacsomancer]

In GitLab by @Lockywolf on Sep 13, 2021, 23:59

It seems that I cannot close this bug. Shall it be closed?

[emacsomancer]

@Lockywolf This change still doesn't fully address the main original issue here, so I'll leave it open.

[emacsomancer]

(Also, there are some advantages to buffer-local as well, cf. https://gitlab.com/emacsomancer/equake/-/issues/26 .)