Re: xref and displaying locations in appropriate window or frame

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 01/24/2016 01:55 PM, martin rudalics wrote:

> I can only give my personal preference, feel free to ignore it: *xref*
> would be displayed by ‘with-temp-buffer-window’ so that I can use
> ‘temp-buffer-resize-mode’ on it.

With its standard-output binding, with-temp-buffer-window is a kind of 
weird beast. Why would I prefer to use the low-level printing 
primitives, instead of `insert'?

Otherwise, I'd be happy to make temp-buffer-resize-mode work. But 
anyway, it seems orthogonal to my question: after *xref* is displayed 
already, how do I show locations from it?

> By default *xref* would be shown at
> the bottom of the frame with columns arranged as in the *Completions*
> buffer.

xref's output is tree-like. It seems hard to arrange it in multiple columns.

What if the original window is already at the bottom of the frame? And, 
say, isn't tall enough to split?

> Conceptually, this should allow to split the "original" window into two
> side-by-side windows where the left one would continue to display the
> original buffer and the right one would display the buffer chosen by
> ‘xref-find-definitions-other-window’.  If there's already another window
> on the side of the original window, that window would be reused by
> ‘xref-find-definitions-other-window’.

How will this happen?

> Obviously, if the frame is too narrow, splitting will fail and the
> buffer will be shown in the original window.  But, as mentioned above,
> there's nothing you can do about this.  The doc-string of
> ‘xref-find-definitions-other-window’ should probably mention it.

I imagine then the user might expect it to be shown above or below the 
original window. Won't they?

> And ‘xref-find-definitions’ would display its buffer in the original
> window above the *xref* window.

Yes, displaying the buffers in the original window is not hard, we just 
have to save a reference to it (although it'd be bad if the user 
switches to *xref* in that window manually).