RE: GNU Emacs raison d'etre

[Drew Adams]

>  > 1. It's trivial to move a minibuffer-only frame
>  > off screen (and bring it back on screen).
> 
> Not in my experience.  Not even for arbitrary frames.

I think it is, at least on MS Windows, and I think
on other OSes also.

I just did it, interactively, using a command that
moves a frame down incrementally.  It just calls
`modify-frame-parameters, changing `top'.

That works fine, whether the minibuffer is active
or not.

Maybe you meant something different?

>  > Presumably, frame parameter `visibility' would
>  > also be usable for this, but it doesn't seem
>  > to have an effect on a minibuffer-only frame,
>  > at least on MS Windows.  Same with parameter
>  > `minibuffer-exit', and same with functions
>  > `make-frame-(in)visible'.  Dunno whether those
>  > are just bugs.
> 
> On every GUI I've seen so far
> (make-frame-invisible (window-frame (minibuffer-window)))
> works as intended.  I call it thousands of times daily
> whenever a minibuffer becomes empty.

Hm.  I've checked only with my setup.  Maybe
something else is going on there.

(progn (make-frame-invisible
         (window-frame (minibuffer-window)))
       (pp-eval-expression
         (frame-parameter nil 'visibility) t))

tells me `t', with my setup.  And the frame
stays visible.

But if what you say is true, then that too
(in addition to moving the frame off-screen
temporarily) should be an option for the
requested behavior.

> I use a minibuffer child frame all the time.  It is invisible whenever
> I don't need it, promptly shows up on any window where I want to interact
> with it and resizes just like any normal minibuffer window.

Great.  I haven't bothered with child frames yet.

Maybe show (or point to) your code for that, as
it sounds like what the requestor is looking for.