In a 2 window setup, is there a way to make all temporary popup buffers (help, compile, occur, etc) always open in a specific window?

For example, I have a left and right window. I do most of my work in the left window. When I lookup something in help it opens in the right window which is what I want.

But let’s say I’m in the right window already and look up help, it will open in the left window. Is there a way to make it always open in the right?

  • nv-elisp@alien.topBEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Customize display-buffer-alist to your liking. There is an Emacs manual section devoted to it as well as several online tutorials.

    • 7890yuiop@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      The display-buffer-reuse-mode-window action may be convenient for this use-case.

      Many of your modes-of-interest will be derivatives of special-mode so you may (or may not) find that specifying that as a catch-all is particularly useful.

  • olikn@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I am looking for something similar, I also do my edits in the left window, if I open a read-only buffer (man page, help, helpfull, info …) I would prefer it will always open on the right side. I can’t help you, but I hope someone else can.

  • Tibblediggins@alien.topOPBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Thank you all for tips. My elisp skills are pretty poor so I’m having trouble figuring out how to make this work, even copying examples online. For example:

    (add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist '("*help*"
                                     (display-buffer-reuse-window)
                                     (display-buffer-in-side-window . ((side . right)
                                                                       (window-width . 0.5)))))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist '("*info*"
                                     (display-buffer-reuse-window)
                                     (display-buffer-in-side-window . ((side . right)
                                                                       (window-width . 0.5)))))

    With that in my init.el, if I open emacs and look up “help” it creates a new window on the right, which is the default behavior so I can’t say for sure if the code is doing anything. If I select a link in the help file (like the manual) that opens “info” it opens it back in the left window.

    What am I doing wrong here?