Protesilaos

Emacs: beframe version 1.3.0

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 “beframed”.

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 “Beframed”

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 “assume” and “unassume” 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 ‘NAME’ 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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