Emacs: reusing window for helpful buffers
Sharing a quick tip for improving how the helpful package manages windows in Emacs. By customizing helpful-switch-buffer-function, we can make help navigation more intuitive - keeping the original code visible while browsing documentation. The solution is just a few lines of Elisp that makes help buffers behave more predictably.
Ironically, I find the helpful package quite helpful. It boosts Emacs help buffer with much more contextual information. If you haven't tried it out yet, I advice you to do so.
However, by default, it doesn't play nicely with windows.
Usually when I write some Elisp and I want to read the documentation of some function or variable, I hit C-h f or C-h v respectively and the help buffer is shown in the separate window. Which is convenient in my opinion, because I can see the code and the help.
Sometimes help contains links to other entries that I need to navigate. And when I hit <RET> window containing code shows another help buffer. Which might be good for some people, but I hate this behaviour, because usually I want to see the code that I am editing.
This is also annoying if you set the value of helpful-max-buffers to 1. Help window and the window with code are swapped on every navigation.
The good thing, it's configurable (as almost everything in Emacs land).
(setq helpful-switch-buffer-function #'+helpful-switch-to-buffer) (defun +helpful-switch-to-buffer (buffer-or-name) "Switch to helpful BUFFER-OR-NAME. The logic is simple, if we are currently in the helpful buffer, reuse it's window, otherwise create new one." (if (eq major-mode 'helpful-mode) (switch-to-buffer buffer-or-name) (pop-to-buffer buffer-or-name)))