Hi,
I use this to always display the *Help* buffer in the selected window,
or to reuse existing window displaying the same buffer:
(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
'("^\\*Help\\*$" . ((display-buffer-reuse-window
display-buffer-same-window))))
With this, whenever I forget the keybindings available during
query-replace and hit '?' to get help, the help buffer is displayed in
the main window which shows the replacements to be performed. When I
try to bury the help buffer with 'q', it doesn't do what I intended - it
quits the query-replace session. The same thing happens when I try to
switch to the main window with 'C-x o' and manually kill the buffer.
The only thing that works really, is to enter recursive edit, kill the
help buffer and exit-recursive-edit.
This happens because the help buffer generated by perform-replace is
named "*Help*" and my display-buffer rule matches it. I work around
this by adding an additional rule to display-buffer-alist which checks
if the help buffer was created by perform-replace. It's ugly:
(defun my//display-buffer-help-for-query-replace-condition (bufname action)
(and (string-match-p "\\*Help\\*" bufname)
(catch 'res
(mapbacktrace (lambda (_evald func _args _flags)
(when (eq func 'perform-replace)
(throw 'res t)))))))
(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
'(my//display-buffer-help-for-query-replace-condition
. (display-buffer-pop-up-window)))
There are a couple of ways to improve behavior of perform-replace:
- Use a different name for the query-replace help buffer (patch attached)
- Make 'C-l' or some other key bury the help buffer, if it was displayed
in the main window
- Make '?' toggle visibility of the help buffer
- Allow switching windows in query-replace
- Display the help message in the minibuffer
0001-Use-a-different-name-for-the-help-buffer-in-query-re.patch
Description: Patch
-- Michał Krzywkowski PGP: A5A7 06C4 28EF 8F64 2868 13A1 7BDE C129 F0B8 09A1
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Description: PGP signature
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