28.8 Recombining Windows
When deleting the last sibling of a window W, its parent window is deleted too, with W replacing it in the window tree. This means that W must be recombined with its parent’s siblings to form a new window combination (see Windows and Frames). In some occasions, deleting a live window may even entail the deletion of two internal windows.
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| ______ ____________________________ |
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|| ||||____W6_____||_____W7____||||
|| |||____________W4____________|||
|| || __________________________ ||
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|| |||____________W5____________|||
||__W2__||_____________W3_____________ |
|__________________W1__________________|
Deleting W5 in this configuration normally causes the deletion of W3 and W4. The remaining live windows W2, W6 and W7 are recombined to form a new horizontal combination with parent W1.
Sometimes, however, it makes sense to not delete a parent window like W4. In particular, a parent window should not be removed when it was used to preserve a combination embedded in a combination of the same type. Such embeddings make sense to assure that when you split a window and subsequently delete the new window, Emacs reestablishes the layout of the associated frame as it existed before the splitting.
Consider a scenario starting with two live windows W2 and W3 and their parent W1.
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|__________________W1__________________|
Split W2 to make a new window W4 as follows.
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||_________________W2_________________||
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||_________________W4_________________||
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||_________________W3_________________||
|__________________W1__________________|
Now, when enlarging a window vertically, Emacs tries to obtain the corresponding space from its lower sibling, provided such a window exists. In our scenario, enlarging W4 will steal space from W3.
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||_________________W2_________________||
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||_________________W4_________________||
| ____________________________________ |
||_________________W3_________________||
|__________________W1__________________|
Deleting W4 will now give its entire space to W2, including the space earlier stolen from W3.
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||_________________W2_________________||
| ____________________________________ |
||_________________W3_________________||
|__________________W1__________________|
This can be counterintuitive, in particular if W4 were used for displaying a buffer only temporarily (see Temporary Displays), and you want to continue working with the initial layout.
The behavior can be fixed by making a new parent window when splitting W2. The variable described next allows that to be done.
user option window-combination-limit
This variable controls whether splitting a window shall make a new parent window. The following values are recognized:
nil
This means that the new live window is allowed to share the existing parent window, if one exists, provided the split occurs in the same direction as the existing window combination (otherwise, a new internal window is created anyway).
window-size
This means that display-buffer makes a new parent window when it splits a window and is passed a window-height or window-width entry in the alist argument (see Buffer Display Action Functions). Otherwise, window splitting behaves as for a value of nil.
temp-buffer-resize
In this case with-temp-buffer-window makes a new parent window when it splits a window and temp-buffer-resize-mode is enabled (see Temporary Displays). Otherwise, window splitting behaves as for nil.
temp-buffer
In this case with-temp-buffer-window always makes a new parent window when it splits an existing window (see Temporary Displays). Otherwise, window splitting behaves as for nil.
display-buffer
This means that when display-buffer (see Choosing Window) splits a window it always makes a new parent window. Otherwise, window splitting behaves as for nil.
t
This means that splitting a window always creates a new parent window. Thus, if the value of this variable is at all times t, then at all times every window tree is a binary tree (a tree where each window except the root window has exactly one sibling).
The default is window-size. Other values are reserved for future use.
If, as a consequence of this variable’s setting, split-window makes a new parent window, it also calls set-window-combination-limit (see below) on the newly-created internal window. This affects how the window tree is rearranged when the child windows are deleted (see below).
If window-combination-limit is t, splitting W2 in the initial configuration of our scenario would have produced this:
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||_________________W5_________________||
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||_________________W3_________________||
|__________________W1__________________|
A new internal window W5 has been created; its children are W2 and the new live window W4. Now, W2 is the only sibling of W4, so enlarging W4 will try to shrink W2, leaving W3 unaffected. Observe that W5 represents a vertical combination of two windows embedded in the vertical combination W1.
function set-window-combination-limit window limit
This function sets the combination limit of the window window to limit. This value can be retrieved via the function window-combination-limit. See below for its effects; note that it is only meaningful for internal windows. The split-window function automatically calls this function, passing it t as limit, provided the value of the variable window-combination-limit is t when it is called.
function window-combination-limit window
This function returns the combination limit for window.
The combination limit is meaningful only for an internal window. If it is nil, then Emacs is allowed to automatically delete window, in response to a window deletion, in order to group the child windows of window with its sibling windows to form a new window combination. If the combination limit is t, the child windows of window are never automatically recombined with its siblings.
If, in the configuration shown at the beginning of this section, the combination limit of W4 (the parent window of W6 and W7) is t, deleting W5 will not implicitly delete W4 too.
Alternatively, the problems sketched above can be avoided by always resizing all windows in the same combination whenever one of its windows is split or deleted. This also permits splitting windows that would be otherwise too small for such an operation.
user option window-combination-resize
If this variable is nil, split-window can only split a window (denoted by window) if window’s screen area is large enough to accommodate both itself and the new window.
If this variable is t, split-window tries to resize all windows that are part of the same combination as window, in order to accommodate the new window. In particular, this may allow split-window to succeed even if window is a fixed-size window or too small to ordinarily split. Furthermore, subsequently resizing or deleting window may resize all other windows in its combination.
The default is nil. Other values are reserved for future use. A specific split operation may ignore the value of this variable if it is affected by a non-nil value of window-combination-limit.
To illustrate the effect of window-combination-resize, consider the following frame layout.
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|__________________W1__________________|
If window-combination-resize is nil, splitting window W3 leaves the size of W2 unchanged:
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|__________________W1__________________|
If window-combination-resize is t, splitting W3 instead leaves all three live windows with approximately the same height:
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||_________________W2_________________||
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||_________________W3_________________||
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||_________________W4_________________||
|__________________W1__________________|
Deleting any of the live windows W2, W3 or W4 will distribute its space proportionally among the two remaining live windows.