Emacs smart split for programmers

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:59:01 +0000

I spend most of my conscious hours in front of Emacs in a terminal window these days, and I share my configuration across all my computers. At work I have a huge monitor, so I split the emacs frame into 3 side-by-side 80-column windows. At home I have a smaller screen with room only enough for two windows. To share the same configuration file, I use the following snippet:

(defun smart-split ()
  "Split the frame into 80-column sub-windows, and make sure no window has
   fewer than 80 columns."
  (interactive)
  (defun smart-split-helper (w)
    "Helper function to split a given window into two, the first of which has 
     80 columns."
    (if (> (window-width w) (* 2 81))
    (let ((w2 (split-window w 82 t)))
      (smart-split-helper w2))))
  (smart-split-helper nil))

(smart-split)

The smart-split function split the emacs frame into a maximum number of 80-column windows. A very portable solution.

A Humble Programmer » lisp

Emacs smart split for programmers