A window configuration records the entire layout of one
frame—all windows, their sizes, their decorations, which buffers they
contain, how those buffers are scrolled, and their value of point, It
also includes the value of minibuffer-scroll-window. As a
special exception, the window configuration does not record the value of
point in the selected window for the current buffer.
You can bring back an entire frame layout by restoring a previously saved window configuration. If you want to record the layout of all frames instead of just one, use a frame configuration instead of a window configuration. See Frame Configurations.
This function returns a new object representing frame’s current
window configuration. The default for frame is the selected
frame. The variable window-persistent-parameters specifies
which window parameters (if any) are saved by this function.
See Window Parameters.
This function restores the configuration of windows and buffers as
specified by configuration, for the frame that
configuration was created for, regardless of whether that frame
is selected or not. The argument configuration must be a value
that was previously returned by current-window-configuration
for that frame. Normally the function also selects the frame which is
recorded in the configuration, but if dont-set-frame is
non-nil, it leaves selected the frame which was already
selected at the start of the function.
Normally the function restores the saved minibuffer (if any), but if
dont-set-miniwindow is non-nil, the minibuffer current
at the start of the function (if any) remains in the mini-window.
If the frame from which configuration was saved is dead, all
this function does is to restore the value of the variable
minibuffer-scroll-window and to adjust the value returned by
minibuffer-selected-window. In this case, the function returns
nil. Otherwise, it returns t.
If the buffer of a window of configuration has been killed since configuration was made, that window is, as a rule, removed from the restored configuration. However, if that window is the last window remaining in the restored configuration, another live buffer is shown in it.
Here is a way of using this function to get the same effect as
save-window-excursion:
(let ((config (current-window-configuration)))
(unwind-protect
(progn (split-window-below nil)
…)
(set-window-configuration config)))
This macro records the window configuration of the selected frame, executes forms in sequence, then restores the earlier window configuration. The return value is the value of the final form in forms.
Most Lisp code should not use this macro; save-selected-window
is typically sufficient. In particular, this macro cannot reliably
prevent the code in forms from opening new windows, because new
windows might be opened in other frames (see Choosing a Window for Displaying a Buffer), and
save-window-excursion only saves and restores the window
configuration on the current frame.
This function returns t if object is a window configuration.
This function says whether two window configurations have the same
window layout, but ignores the values of point and the saved scrolling
positions—it can return t even if those aspects differ.
This function returns the frame for which the window configuration config was made.
Other primitives to look inside of window configurations would make sense, but are not implemented because we did not need them. See the file winner.el for some more operations on windows configurations.
The objects returned by current-window-configuration die
together with the Emacs process. In order to store a window
configuration on disk and read it back in another Emacs session, you
can use the functions described next. These functions are also useful
to clone the state of a frame into an arbitrary live window
(set-window-configuration effectively clones the windows of a
frame into the root window of that very frame only).
This function returns the state of window as a Lisp object. The argument window must be a valid window and defaults to the root window of the selected frame.
If the optional argument writable is non-nil, this means to
not use markers for sampling positions like window-point or
window-start. This argument should be non-nil when the
state will be written to disk and read back in another session.
Together, the argument writable and the variable
window-persistent-parameters specify which window parameters are
saved by this function. See Window Parameters.
The value returned by window-state-get can be used in the same
session to make a clone of a window in another window. It can be also
written to disk and read back in another session. In either case, use
the following function to restore the state of the window.
This function puts the window state state into window.
The argument state should be the state of a window returned by
an earlier invocation of window-state-get, see above. The
optional argument window can be either a live window or an
internal window (see Windows and Frames). If window is not
a live window, it is replaced by a new live window created on the same
frame before putting state into it. If window is nil,
it puts the window state into a new window.
If the optional argument ignore is non-nil, it means to ignore
minimum window sizes and fixed-size restrictions. If ignore
is safe, this means windows can get as small as one line
and/or two columns.
The functions window-state-get and window-state-put also
allow to exchange the contents of two live windows. The following
function does precisely that:
This command swaps the states of the two live windows window-1 and window-2. window-1 must specify a live window and defaults to the selected one. window-2 must specify a live window and defaults to the window following window-1 in the cyclic ordering of windows, excluding minibuffer windows and including live windows on all visible frames.
Optional argument size non-nil means to try swapping the
sizes of window-1 and window-2 as well. A value of
height means to swap heights only, a value of width
means to swap widths only, while t means to swap both widths
and heights, if possible. Frames are not resized by this function.