Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!rutgers!topaz!gallaher
From: gallaher@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Mike Gallaher)
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: Bogus transient windows in Unipress Emacs
Message-ID: <6258@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Thu, 16-Oct-86 06:08:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.6258
Posted: Thu Oct 16 06:08:57 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 22:09:16 EDT
References: <3948@amdahl.UUCP> <3473@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> <1407@Diamond.BBN.COM>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 30
Keywords: bogus,Unipress,transient
Summary: If you haven't used Gosling's Emacs lately...

Many people complained about the permanent pop-up help window in early Gosling
Emacs, mostly because it suddenly obliterated their carefully crafted window
setup (which was not easy to reconstruct way back then).  I hated those windows
myself.  Unipress Emacs V2.10 displays help buffers in transient typeout
windows that go away when you are done looking at them, restoring the screen to
its previous state.  Almost everyone finds this more appealing (chongo's is the
first dissenting opinion I've heard), so it didn't occur to me to make
accessible an option to turn it off.  It isn't hard to do so, so I will.  For
now (set-help-typeout-hook "nothing") will disable it for the internally
generated help output, though some other commands will still use typeout
windows.  (chongo, what is it that typeout windows make inconvenient for you to
do?)

This style of typeout window is not really like that of ITS Emacs, whose help
typeout was not easily accessible as buffer text.  In V2.10, a typeout window
is just a transient window that looks at some buffer into which some command
has generated its output.  Such buffers do not go away when the typeout window
does, unless the command explicitly deletes them.  You can edit the buffer
anytime, just as you can any other buffer.  The internally generated help
messages (e.g., from typing '?' to visit-file or use-old-buffer) stay in the
buffer "Help".  You can always type ^R at a typeout window to recursively edit
its contents; type ^_-b to see its name.  You might want to rename the buffer
or copy its contents to another buffer if you want to be sure it will not go
away.  To see the name of the buffer without having to edit it, add %b to the
typeout-more-prompt and typeout-end-prompt variables.

edit-in-transient-window has nothing to do with typeout windows; it enters a
recursive edit in a transient window for quickly editing short bits of text, as
is done by edit-variable and edit-word-description.  (You can see the
documentation of these functions via ^_-d.)