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### 27.8 Recombining Windows

When deleting the last sibling of a window W, its parent window is deleted too, with W replacing it in the window tree. This means that W must be recombined with its parent’s siblings to form a new window combination (see Windows and Frames). In some occasions, deleting a live window may even entail the deletion of two internal windows.

         ______________________________________
        | ______  ____________________________ |
        ||      || __________________________ ||
        ||      ||| ___________  ___________ |||
        ||      ||||           ||           ||||
        ||      ||||____W6_____||_____W7____||||
        ||      |||____________W4____________|||
        ||      || __________________________ ||
        ||      |||                          |||
        ||      |||                          |||
        ||      |||____________W5____________|||
        ||__W2__||_____________W3_____________ |
        |__________________W1__________________|

Deleting W5 in this configuration normally causes the deletion of W3 and W4. The remaining live windows W2, W6 and W7 are recombined to form a new horizontal combination with parent W1.

Sometimes, however, it makes sense to not delete a parent window like W4. In particular, a parent window should not be removed when it was used to preserve a combination embedded in a combination of the same type. Such embeddings make sense to assure that when you split a window and subsequently delete the new window, Emacs reestablishes the layout of the associated frame as it existed before the splitting.

Consider a scenario starting with two live windows W2 and W3 and their parent W1.

         ______________________________________
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W2_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W3_________________||
        |__________________W1__________________|

Split W2 to make a new window W4 as follows.

         ______________________________________
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W2_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W4_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W3_________________||
        |__________________W1__________________|

Now, when enlarging a window vertically, Emacs tries to obtain the corresponding space from its lower sibling, provided such a window exists. In our scenario, enlarging W4 will steal space from W3.

         ______________________________________
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W2_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W4_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||_________________W3_________________||
        |__________________W1__________________|

Deleting W4 will now give its entire space to W2, including the space earlier stolen from W3.

         ______________________________________
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W2_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||_________________W3_________________||
        |__________________W1__________________|

This can be counterintuitive, in particular if W4 were used for displaying a buffer only temporarily (see Temporary Displays), and you want to continue working with the initial layout.

The behavior can be fixed by making a new parent window when splitting W2. The variable described next allows that to be done.

User Option: window-combination-limit

  This variable controls whether splitting a window shall make a new parent window. The following values are recognized:

  `nil`

    This means that the new live window is allowed to share the existing parent window, if one exists, provided the split occurs in the same direction as the existing window combination (otherwise, a new internal window is created anyway).

  `window-size`

    In this case `display-buffer` makes a new parent window if it is passed a `window-height` or `window-width` entry in the alist argument (see Display Action Functions).

  `temp-buffer`

    This value causes the creation of a new parent window when a window is split for showing a temporary buffer (see Temporary Displays) only.

  `display-buffer`

    This means that when `display-buffer` (see Choosing Window) splits a window it always makes a new parent window.

  `t`

    In this case a new parent window is always created when splitting a window. Thus, if the value of this variable is at all times `t`, then at all times every window tree is a binary tree (a tree where each window except the root window has exactly one sibling).

  The default is `nil`. Other values are reserved for future use.

  If, as a consequence of this variable’s setting, `split-window` makes a new parent window, it also calls `set-window-combination-limit` (see below) on the newly-created internal window. This affects how the window tree is rearranged when the child windows are deleted (see below).

If `window-combination-limit` is `t`, splitting W2 in the initial configuration of our scenario would have produced this:

         ______________________________________
        | ____________________________________ |
        || __________________________________ ||
        |||                                  |||
        |||________________W2________________|||
        || __________________________________ ||
        |||                                  |||
        |||________________W4________________|||
        ||_________________W5_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W3_________________||
        |__________________W1__________________|

A new internal window W5 has been created; its children are W2 and the new live window W4. Now, W2 is the only sibling of W4, so enlarging W4 will try to shrink W2, leaving W3 unaffected. Observe that W5 represents a vertical combination of two windows embedded in the vertical combination W1.

Function: set-window-combination-limit window limit

  This function sets the combination limit of the window window to limit. This value can be retrieved via the function `window-combination-limit`. See below for its effects; note that it is only meaningful for internal windows. The `split-window` function automatically calls this function, passing it `t` as limit, provided the value of the variable `window-combination-limit` is `t` when it is called.

Function: window-combination-limit window

  This function returns the combination limit for window.

  The combination limit is meaningful only for an internal window. If it is `nil`, then Emacs is allowed to automatically delete window, in response to a window deletion, in order to group the child windows of window with its sibling windows to form a new window combination. If the combination limit is `t`, the child windows of window are never automatically recombined with its siblings.

  If, in the configuration shown at the beginning of this section, the combination limit of W4 (the parent window of W6 and W7) is `t`, deleting W5 will not implicitly delete W4 too.

Alternatively, the problems sketched above can be avoided by always resizing all windows in the same combination whenever one of its windows is split or deleted. This also permits splitting windows that would be otherwise too small for such an operation.

User Option: window-combination-resize

  If this variable is `nil`, `split-window` can only split a window (denoted by window) if window’s screen area is large enough to accommodate both itself and the new window.

  If this variable is `t`, `split-window` tries to resize all windows that are part of the same combination as window, in order to accommodate the new window. In particular, this may allow `split-window` to succeed even if window is a fixed-size window or too small to ordinarily split. Furthermore, subsequently resizing or deleting window may resize all other windows in its combination.

  The default is `nil`. Other values are reserved for future use. The value of this variable is ignored when `window-combination-limit` is non-`nil`.

To illustrate the effect of `window-combination-resize`, consider the following frame layout.

         ______________________________________
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W2_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W3_________________||
        |__________________W1__________________|

If `window-combination-resize` is `nil`, splitting window W3 leaves the size of W2 unchanged:

         ______________________________________
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W2_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W3_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W4_________________||
        |__________________W1__________________|

If `window-combination-resize` is `t`, splitting W3 instead leaves all three live windows with approximately the same height:

         ______________________________________
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W2_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W3_________________||
        | ____________________________________ |
        ||                                    ||
        ||                                    ||
        ||_________________W4_________________||
        |__________________W1__________________|

Deleting any of the live windows W2, W3 or W4 will distribute its space proportionally among the two remaining live windows.

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