Re: Org-Capture Window Behavior

[Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>]

Amol Vaidya <amolvaidya06@gmail.com> writes:

> Thank you for your clarification. Just a minor point: my concern is that
> org-capture is not adhering to general display-buffer settings rather than
> specifically display-buffer-alist. In my case display-buffer-alist is nil
> when I run emacs -q, but according to section 29.13.1 of the Elisp manual,
> if display-buffer-alist is nil, then display-buffer should consult the
> display-buffer-base-action user option to decide where to display a buffer.

I see.
I think that you misunderstood what `display-buffer-base-action' is for.
It is only used when the Emacs package that is displaying the buffer
does not specify how to display it (in other words, calling
`display-buffer' without specifying ACTION argument)

That's not what Org capture do. Org capture does tell Emacs how to
display the buffer. Only when the user explicitly overrides Org capture
display settings (via `display-buffer-alist' or
`display-buffer-overriding-action'), the default behavior is changed.

If you look into the docstring of `display-buffer', you will see that
there are a number of user settings with different priorities:

    display-buffer builds a list of action functions and an action
    alist by combining any action functions and alists specified by
    display-buffer-overriding-action, display-buffer-alist, the
    ACTION argument, display-buffer-base-action, and
    display-buffer-fallback-action (in order).  Then it calls each
    function in the combined function list in turn, passing the
    buffer as the first argument and the combined action alist as the
    second argument, until one of the functions returns non-nil.

There is no bug in Org capture that we provide ACTION argument to hint
Emacs using what we believe is a better default compared to generic
buffer popups.

For you, as a user, the right way to configure how Org capture window is
displayed is customizing `display-buffer-alist'.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>