Re: Using Emacs on small-display devices

[Stefan Monnier]

> I think the important things are the following abilities:
>  a) separate the message area and minibuffer;

I don't think you can do that nowadays, although you get partway there
by defadvicing `message' and then using something like tooltips for the
echo area.

>  b) overlay the message area and modeline (message replaces file name?);

You can try to tweak the previous advice so it doesn't use a tooltip but
instead it just places the message into a variable that's displayed in
the mode-line.  Not sure how well that would work.

>  c) put a "pseudo-menubar" icon on modeline: clicking on it pops up a
>     popup-equivalent of menubar (i.e., vertical vs horizontal layout);

That can be done fairly easily and cleanly (the mode-line already has
some menus when you click for example on the major mode name).
The "full menu bar, with different layout" is already available on
C-mouse-3 by default, so you'd just have to bind it to a mode-line button.

>  c') put modeline on top, since it is where one expects such icons;

Can't do it right without major surgery, but can fake it as mentioned by
someone else by (setq-default header-line-format mode-line-format) and
(setq-default mode-line-format nil).  That will conflict with other uses
of the header-line, tho.

>  d) ability to make a minibuffer overlaid "on top of" modeline, so it
>     does not take place when not needed.

This one seems difficult to do.  You may be able to kludge it somehow:
- make a frame without minibuffer.
- since this requires a minibuffer on some other frame, hide that other frame.
- try and hook into the commands that use a minibuffer so that they work
  by first creating a new window on the current frame and work in
  that window intead of working in "the minibuffer mini-window".
Probably won't be pretty.

>  e) ability to make emacs full-screen (no border, no taskbar visible);

I think we already support that cleanly, tho it depends on cooperation
from the WM, of course.

>  f) ability to switch between two layouts (one as above, one "usual")
>     by one keypress.

That's the easy part, of course.


        Stefan