Node:ecb-layout, Next:, Previous:ecb-history, Up:Customizable options


Group ecb-layout

This group contains the following options:

activate-before-new-frame-created-hook User Option
Normal hook run before the new ECB-frame is created if ecb-new-ecb-frame is not nil (otherwise this hook is not evaluated).

advice-window-functions User Option
Advice functions to be more intelligent if used with ECB. You can choose the following functions to be adviced by ECB so they behave as if the edit-window(s) of ECB would be the only windows(s) of the ECB-frame:
  • other-window For this one see also the option ecb-other-window-jump-behavior!
  • delete-window
  • delete-other-windows
  • delete-windows-on
  • split-window-horizontally
  • split-window-vertically
  • split-window If this advice is enabled then split-window-vertically and split-window-horizontally are autom. enabled too!
  • switch-to-buffer
  • switch-to-buffer-other-window
  • display-buffer Especially if ecb-compile-window-height is not nil it is strongly recommended not to disable this advice!
  • other-window-for-scrolling If this advice is enabled then the following functions scroll always the first edit-window if the edit-window is splitted, point stays in the "other" edit-window and there is no durable compilation-window (see ecb-compile-window-height):
    • scroll-other-window
    • scroll-other-window-down
    • beginning-of-buffer-other-window
    • end-of-buffer-other-window

    This advice is per default not enabled.

For working most conveniently with ECB it is the best to advice all these functions, because then all the standard shortcuts of these functions are also usable with ECB without doing anything else. Also other packages can interact best with ECB if these functions are all adviced. If these adviced functions are called in another frame than the ECB-frame they behave all exactly like the not adviced versions!

But please read also the following:

Normally all packages should work correct with ECB and itīs adviced functions but if there occur problems with a package cause of some of these adviced functions ECB offers the following fall-back solution:

  1. Deactivate in ecb-advice-window-functions all the adviced-functions which make problems with other packages.
  2. For every of the advice-able functions <adv-func> ECB offers a interactively function named "ecb-<adv-func>" which does exactly the same as the adviced version of <adv-func>. Use "ecb-<adv-func>" instead the original one to get the proper ECB behavior even if the function is not adviced anymore.
  3. You can bind in ecb-activate-hook the standard-shortcut of <adv-func> to "ecb-<adv-func>" and rebind it in ecb-deactivate-hook to <adv-func>.
  4. Now you have the best of both worlds: The problematic package works and you have the ECB-behavior of <adv-func> as if it would be adviced.

Here is an example: Suppose you must deactivating the advice for switch-to-buffer-other-window. Then you deactivate this function with this option and you can use ecb-switch-to-buffer-other-window instead. Bind the shortcut you normally use for switch-to-buffer-other-window to ecb-switch-to-buffer-other-window (use ecb-activate-hook for this) and rebind it to the original function in the ecb-deactivate-hook.

fix-window-size User Option
Fix size of the ECB-windows/buffers even after frame-resizing. The fix type (valid values are nil, t, width and height) can either be set on a layout-basis (means a different value for each layout) or one value can be set for all layouts.

For a detailed description of the valid values see description of window-size-fixed which is newly introduced in GNU Emacs 21 and is only available there. Therefore this option takes only effect with GNU Emacs 21.

Note1: Manually resizing the ECB-windows via enlarge-window, shrink-window, mouse-drag-vertical-line and mouse-drag-mode-line is still possible even if the window-sizes are fixed for frame-resizing!

Note2: The description of window-size-fixed in the Elisp-info-manual is more detailed than the description offered by C-h v!

Note3: With current Emacs 21.2.X there seems to be no distinction between width, height and t. Therefore this option takes no effect (means all ecb-windows have always unfixed sizes) if ecb-compile-window-height is not nil.

Per default no window-size fixing has been done.

hide-ecb-windows-after-hook User Option
Hooks run direct after the ECB windows have been hidden either by ecb-toggle-ecb-windows or ecb-hide-ecb-windows.

hide-ecb-windows-before-hook User Option
Hooks run direct before the ECB windows will be hidden either by ecb-toggle-ecb-windows or ecb-hide-ecb-windows. This means that at runtime of this hook all the ECB-tree-windows of current layout are visible.

layout-always-operate-in-edit-window User Option
Adviced window functions work always in the edit-window. If we are in an ECB special buffer (methods, directories, etc), and any of the adviced windowing functions is called (see ecb-advice-window-functions), we will select the ecb-edit-window first. This is useful if you have any functions that use such functions and you don't want them to just error with a method complaining that the current buffer can not be split, or something similar.

Because this may not be desirable in all situations and all adviced functions this can be enabled separately for every advisable function (see also ecb-advice-window-functions). If the symbol of an adviced function is contained in the value of this option, then the edit-window is first selected otherwise either an error is reported or some other special reaction; see the documentation of the adviced functions for this.

For other-window, other-window-for-scrolling and switch-to-buffer-other-window this makes no sense, therefore you can not enable this for them.

Per default this is enabled for delete-window, delete-other-windows, switch-to-buffer.

layout-debug-mode User Option
Write debug-information about layout-operations in the Messages-buffer. Normally there should be no need to set this option to true but if there are problems to display buffers in the compile-window of ECB (e.g. buffers which should be displayed there aren't or the temporally enlarging-mechanism does not do what you think it should do etc...) then please do the following steps:

  1. Set ecb-layout-debug-mode to not nil
  2. Reproduce the wrong behavior exactly by repeating all the operations which lead to the problem.
  3. Now send immediately a bug report with ecb-submit-problem-report.
  4. Set ecb-layout-debug-mode back to nil if you do not want further debugging output in the *Messages* buffer

layout-name User Option
Select a window layout of ECB. Value is any arbitrary string. There are four different types of layouts: left, right, top and left-right, which means the location of the ECB-tree-windows in the ECB-frame. Currently there are 20 predefined layouts; names see below. You can savely try out any of them by changing this value and saving it only for the current session. If you are sure which layout you want you can save it for future sessions. To get a picture of the layout for name <name> call `ecb-show-layout-help'. ecb-layout-function-9.

Currently available layouts:

  • Left layouts: left1 left2 left3 left4 left5 left6 left7 left8 left9 left10 left11 left12 left13 left14 left15
  • Right layouts: right1
  • Top layouts: top1 top2
  • Left-right layouts: leftright1 leftright2

Regardless of the settings you define here: If you have destroyed or changed the ECB-screen-layout by any action you can always go back to this layout with ecb-redraw-layout

layout-window-sizes User Option
Specifies the sizes of the ECB windows for each layout. The easiest way (and also the strongly recommended way) to change this variable is to change the window sizes by dragging the window borders using the mouse and then store the window sizes by calling the command ecb-store-window-sizes. Next time the layout is redrawn the values stored in this option will be used.

If ecb-store-window-sizes is used then the windows sizes are stored per default as fractions of current frame-width and -height of the ecb-frame, so the stored values will "work" for other frame sizes too. But if you call ecb-store-window-sizes with a prefix-argument then the fixed values of current width and height are stored!

If this option is set "by hand" (i.e. not by ecb-store-window-sizes) then the following is important:

  • It is recommended to use fractions of frame-width and -height!.
  • The order of the sequence of the inserted window sizes must be the same as other-window (the not-adviced version!) would walk!

new-ecb-frame User Option
Create a new frame at activation time of ECB.

other-window-jump-behavior User Option
Which windows of ECB should be accessible by the ECB-adviced function other-window, an intelligent replacement for the Emacs standard version of other-window. The following settings are possible:
  • all: ECB will cycle through all windows of ECB, means it behaves like the original other-window.
  • only-edit: ECB will only cycle through the (max. 2) edit-windows of ECB.
  • edit-and-compile: Like 'only-edit plus the compile window if any.

redraw-layout-after-hook User Option
Hooks run direct before the ECB windows will be shown either by ecb-toggle-ecb-windows or ecb-show-ecb-windows. This means that at runtime of this hook the ECB-windows are already visible.

redraw-layout-before-hook User Option
Hooks run direct before the ECB-layout will be redrawn by either ecb-redraw-layout.

redraw-layout-quickly User Option
If non-nil, we will attempt to redraw the layout quickly. Please read also carefully the documentation of ecb-redraw-layout.

select-edit-window-on-redraw User Option
Select the first edit window on ecb-redraw-layout.

show-ecb-windows-after-hook User Option
Hooks run direct before the ECB windows will be shown either by ecb-toggle-ecb-windows or ecb-show-ecb-windows. This means that at runtime of this hook the ECB-windows are already visible.

IMPORTANT: Showing the hidden ECB-windows is internally done by calling ecb-redraw-layout and therefore also the hooks ecb-redraw-layout-before-hook and ecb-redraw-layout-after-hook are evaluated. So there is the following sequence of hooks during the process of showing the hidden ECB-windows:

  1. ecb-show-ecb-windows-before-hook
  2. ecb-redraw-layout-before-hook
  3. <redrawing the layout to show the hidden ECB-windows>
  4. ecb-redraw-layout-after-hook
  5. ecb-show-ecb-windows-after-hook
So be aware which code you add to which hook!

show-ecb-windows-before-hook User Option
Hooks run direct before the ECB windows will be shown either by ecb-toggle-ecb-windows or ecb-show-ecb-windows. This means that at runtime of this hook the ECB-windows are still hidden.

IMPORTANT: Showing the hidden ECB-windows is internally done by calling ecb-redraw-layout and therefore also the hooks ecb-redraw-layout-before-hook and ecb-redraw-layout-after-hook are evaluated. So there is the following sequence of hooks during the process of showing the hidden ECB-windows:

  1. ecb-show-ecb-windows-before-hook
  2. ecb-redraw-layout-before-hook
  3. <redrawing the layout to show the hidden ECB-windows>
  4. ecb-redraw-layout-after-hook
  5. ecb-show-ecb-windows-after-hook
So be aware which code you add to which hook!

split-edit-window User Option
Sets how and if the edit window should be splitted. But be aware: This option determines only if the edit-window should be splitted at start-time of ECB.

toggle-layout-sequence User Option
Toggle sequence for layout toggling with ecb-toggle-layout. Every element of this list has to be a valid layout-name i.e. either one of the predefined layouts or one of the user-defined layouts.

You can add here as many layouts as you want but to use this option most effective you should not add more than 2 or 3 layouts so every layout can be accessed very fast by toggling with ecb-toggle-layout. It is also senseful to add layouts which have the same principal outline, i.e. all their tree-buffers are on the same side of the frame and the tree-buffer-"column" (or -"row") has identical size for the layouts.

Recommended values are for example:

  • ("left10" "left15"), toggles between methods and directories/history
  • ("left10" "left13"), toggles between methods and directories
  • ("left10" "left14"), toggles between methods and history
  • ("left10" "left13" "left14"), toggles between methods, history and directories

See also option ecb-show-sources-in-directories-buffer.

This option makes only sense if the value is a list with more than 1 element!

windows-height User Option
The height of the ECB windows in lines for top-layouts. If the number is less than 1.0 the width is a fraction of the frame height.

windows-width User Option
The width of the ECB windows in columns for left- and right layouts. If the number is less than 1.0 the width is a fraction of the frame width.