Protesilaos Stavrou

Emacs: beframe version 1.2.0

beframe enables a frame-oriented Emacs workflow where each frame has access only to the list of buffers visited therein. In the interest of brevity, we call buffers that belong to frames ā€œbeframedā€.

Below are the release notes

Version 1.3.0 on 2025-01-24

This version contains quality-of-life refinements to an already stable package.

Make frame names unique, if needed

We provide the user option beframe-rename-function, which will be called with the new frame when beframe-mode is enabled. The idea is to automatically apply a helpful name to the frame that was created. The default function we use is beframe-rename-frame, which will do the right thing to get a suitable name. To make this even more robust, we now disambiguate equal frame names by appending a number to their name. So instead of having two or more frames all named hello, you get hello, hello<2>, and so on.

Thanks to Vedang Manerikar for the original contribution in pull request 12: https://github.com/protesilaos/beframe/pull/12. The change is within the ~15-line limit, meaning that Vedang does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation (though I believe the paperwork is done anyway). I made some further changes on top.

Remember that you can make certain commands automatically generate a frame and run therein by adding them to the list of beframe-functions-in-frames. A common use-case is to do this for switching to a new project, hence:

(setq beframe-functions-in-frames '(project-prompt-project-dir))

Use the optional beframe-transient instead of the prefix key map

We provide a regular prefix key map where Beframe commands are bound to. Users can access all the commands via a prefix key, such as with:

(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c b") #'beframe-prefix-map)

Users who prefer a more graphical interface can instead rely on the new beframe-transient. It is the same principle as the prefix key map:

(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c b") #'beframe-transient)

[ The difference between the two interfaces is small when using the which-key package. ]

The buffer prompt clarifies that it is ā€œBeframedā€

While using the beframe-mode, the standard read-buffer-function is set to a Beframe function that prompts for a buffer. The idea is to filter the list of buffers to only show those that are specific to the current/given frame. To make this more clear, the text of the prompt now has [Beframed] prepended to it.

I do not think we need a user option for this, though I am happy to reconsider if there is a good reason for it.

Miscellaneous

  • Fixed the function aliases of the ā€œassumeā€ and ā€œunassumeā€ commands that take a regular expression as input to perform their operation. The old aliases where written in the wrong way, such that they were rendering the original function void.

  • Bound a few more commands to the beframe-prefix-map. Everything should now be there, to improve discoverability (remember that C-h after an incomplete key sequence will produce a Help buffer that lists all the keys+commands which extend the given key sequence).

  • The name of the beframe-buffer-menu buffer is more descriptive. The command beframe-buffer-menu puts the beframed list of buffers in a buffer. Its old naming scheme was *Buffer list for NAME*, where NAME is the name of the frame. Whereas now it is *Buffer list for ā€˜NAMEā€™ frame*.

  • Same as above for the frame-specific scratch buffers. Those are generated for new frames when beframe-create-frame-scratch-buffer is non-nil (the default) and beframe-mode is enabled.

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