Using activities.el to persist frame across innovations

[haji-ali]

Following on #27, I am trying to use activites.el for the same purpose as that PR (persist frame across innovations).

I am still learning about the design and functionality of activites.el, but to start with I came up with this yequake--toggle-frame implementation (just as a way to test how activites.el could be called, the implementation is certainly not correct).

Details

(defun yequake--toggle-frame (name frame)
  "If frame named NAME exists but is unfocused, raise and focus it; if focused, delete it; otherwise, display FRAME anew."
  (let ((activity (map-elt activities-activities name)))
    (if-let* ((visible-frame (alist-get name (make-frame-names-alist) nil nil #'string=)))
        (if (and yequake-focused (equal visible-frame (selected-frame)))
            ;; Frame is visible and focused: delete it.
            (progn (with-selected-frame visible-frame
                     (activities-suspend activity)))
          ;; Frame is visible but not focused: raise and focus it.
          (select-frame-set-input-focus visible-frame)
          (setq yequake-focused t))
      ;; Frame doesn't exist: make it.
      (-let* (((&alist '_x '_y 'width 'height 'left 'top 'buffer-fns 'alpha 'frame-parameters) frame)
              ((monitor-x monitor-y monitor-width monitor-height) (mapcar #'floor (alist-get 'geometry (frame-monitor-attributes))))
              (frame-width (cl-typecase width
                             (integer width)
                             (float (floor (* monitor-width width)))))
              (frame-height (cl-typecase height
                              (integer height)
                              (float (floor (* monitor-height height)))))
              (frame-x (or left
                           (+ monitor-x (floor (/ (- monitor-width frame-width)
                                                  2)))))
              (frame-y (or top monitor-y))
              (new-frame (make-frame (append frame-parameters
                                             (list (cons 'name name)
                                                   (cons 'alpha alpha)
                                                   (cons 'left frame-x)
                                                   (cons 'top frame-y)
                                                   (cons 'width (cons 'text-pixels frame-width))
                                                   (cons 'height (cons 'text-pixels frame-height))
                                                   (cons 'user-position t))))))

        (select-frame new-frame)
        (select-frame-set-input-focus new-frame)
        (if activity
            (let ((activities-resume-into-frame 'current))
              (activities-resume activity))
          (delete-other-windows))
        (add-hook 'focus-in-hook #'yequake--focus-in)
        (add-hook 'focus-out-hook #'yequake--focus-out)
        (setq yequake-recent-frame-name name
              yequake-focused t)
        ;; Call show-buffers function after setting focus and variable.
        ;; If show-buffers is aborted, the frame will be focused and
        ;; recorded as such, so -retoggle can hide it again.  This is
        ;; required for `yequake-org-capture'.
        (unless activity
          (when (yequake--show-buffers buffer-fns)
            new-frame)
          (with-selected-frame new-frame
            (activities-define name)))
        new-frame))))

Here is what I found so far

• I believe yequake is incompatible with activities.el when activities-tabs-mode is enabled.
• For some reason, not all frame parameters are saved with activities.el, so I have to re-create the frame with all the parameters and call activities-resume with the activities-resume-into-frame set to current.
• activities.el doesn't seem to save tabs, just windows. I am mainly interested in saving tabs.
• There is also some extra weirdness (with focus) on my system when toggling yequake off when using activities.el vs when not using it, so the previous implementation is not completely side-effect free.

Overall, I am finding it somewhat difficult to get activities.el working as I would expect it and the implementation in #27 is much more straightforward.

[alphapapa]

Well, the starting point I had in mind was to call activities-resume in the Yequake buffer functions, or something like that. The idea would be that Yequake would open a frame, and Activities would then restore an activity (window configuration) into it. I would expect there to be details to be worked out, and maybe some changes to be made on both sides to enable better integration, but the idea would be to not make any changes one side that are specific to the other, i.e. generally hooks and such should be used to enable general integration.

If you need Activities to deal with frame parameters, feel free to open an issue on its tracker to discuss it.

[haji-ali]

@alphapapa, yes indeed. I just wanted to do some basic implementation (not well-integrated) to see how activities.el would currently deal with yequake, I was planning to iron out the details later if the outcome is suitable. My conclusion is that there will be many needed changes in activities.el, which would be beyond my expertise.

Maybe we can add the necessary hooks/changes to yequake and then I can use them with my code from #27, or one can use them to call activities.el routines if one has that package.

Ideas for changes:

• Allow frame-parameters in yequake-frames to be a function which takes a list of default frame parameters and returns the final list of parameters. If frame-parameters is a list, then those parameters are simply added to the default parameters, as is done now. This would be useful to change the frame parameters dynamically. I can use this way to restore frame parameters (even if I don't use activities.el)
  EDIT: Even better, allow a custom make-frame function. This would allow integration with frame-purpose.el for example.
• a hook after creating the frame. Presumably this is where activities-resume would be called.
• a hook before deleting the frame. Last minute cleanup and state saving before losing the frame.

All hooks are called with the name of the frame.

I am currently able to use advices to achieve the functionality of the hooks, but had to check the existence of the frame to figure out what yequake--toggle-frame would do (create or delete a frame)