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FisheyeWithThumbs

A fish eye

with thumbs? thumbimg thumbimg eyeimg thumbimg thumbimg

I must have missed that in my zoology classes. Tell me more…

In Emacs, you have the following choices for frame “states”:

  • visible (raised) – can be of any size; can be maximized to fit your display
  • iconified (minimized)
  • invisible (in NetherNetherLand) – don’t ask where this is

Library thumb-frm.el provides an additional frame “state”: thumbnail. In the spectrum from visible to invisible, thumbnail is between visible and iconified.

Screen Shot

A picture is worth a thousand words. Well, maybe a thumbnail is worth only 50 words:

DrewEmacsFisheye

Well, actually, that’s an old screenshot. Here’s one more recent, showing the default behavior of making thumbnail frames semi-transparent when they are not selected (you control this using option ‘thumfr-frame-parameters’ with frame parameter ‘alpha’).

DrewEmacsFisheyeTransparent

Thumbnail Frame FAQ

What is a thumbnail frame?
: It’s just a tiny frame, where everything is shrunk: characters, scroll bar, minibuffer (if present) – everything. By default it has no menu bar or tool bar. It’s like a large desktop icon, but it shows you what is in the frame — a transparent icon. And it is live — you can interact with it normally.
Is it just a picture?
: No, a thumbnail frame is a fully functioning, active frame. So be careful: you can make changes in it without necessarily seeing what you are doing.
Can I use thumb-frm.el to view images (e.g. photos) as thumbnails?
: No, it shrinks only text, not graphics – a thumbnail of a displayed image just shows a tiny part of the image at full size. To create and view image thumbnails, see ThumbsMode.
What good is a thumbnail frame?
: You can see what is in it, but it doesn’t take up much room. It’s as easy to thumbify and dethumbify a frame as it is to iconify and deiconify it. Thumbnail frames can be stacked (arranged) along an edge of your display for access and reference. They aren’t quite as out-of-the-way as icons, and they provide more info and content access than icons.
You can, for instance, search through or monitor the progress of their buffers. Put a progressive-output buffer (make, grep, shell, communication) in a thumbnail frame to monitor its progress, then dethumbify it when something interesting happens. Or use a thumbnail frame when you want a buffer to be current but not in-your-face – click to choose a buffer without fanfare.
What’s the “fisheye” stuff all about?
: A fisheye lens shows you the center of attention close up and everything else (on the periphery) appears very small. This effect is sometimes used in user-interface design to achieve a compromise between showing you what you’re focusing on and giving you some idea of its surrounding context.
Command ‘thumfr-fisheye’ thumbifies all frames except the selected frame, so you can still see them but concentrate on the frame at hand – the others are there, but out of the way. You can use other fisheye commands to cycle the fisheye among the visible frames. (This is kind of like using ‘ALT TAB’ in Windows.)
Is this really useful, or just a gadget?
: Yes, it is useful ;-). Try it and decide for yourself. (Those baby frames are cute, in any case, no?)
Actually, at first I did not expect that this feature would be very useful. After using it for a while, however, I realized that I greatly preferred it to iconifying, so I decided to provide it as a general replacement for iconifying. Out of the box, thumb-frm.el now replaces iconifying with thumbifying; if you do not want that replacement, you can easily turn it off.
How can I get back the original behavior of ‘iconify-frame’?
: Set ‘thumfr-thumbify-dont-iconify-flag’ to ‘nil’, or use ‘ad-deactivate’ on ‘iconify-frame’ and ‘iconify-or-deiconify-frame’.

Commands, Keys, and Variables

Commands

  • ‘thumfr-thumbify-other-frames’ (alias ‘thumfr-fisheye’) – Turn each frame except the selected frame into a thumbnail. Stack (arrange) the thumbnails along an edge of the display (using ‘thumfr-stack-thumbnail-frames’). I bind this to `[C-S-mouse-3]’ – just click a frame to make it the fisheye focus.
  • ‘thumfr-fisheye-next-frame’, ‘thumfr-fisheye-previous-frame’ – Successively cycle through the visible frames using the fisheye; that is, successively call ‘thumfr-thumbify-other-frames’ on each visible frame. I bind these to ‘C-M-next’ and ‘C-M-prior’. This is kind of like using ‘ALT TAB’ in Windows: you move the focus to the next frame, and all the others are stacked up as thumbnails.
  • ‘thumfr-doremi-thumbnail-frames’ – Same effect as ‘thumfr-fisheye-next-frame’ and ‘thumfr-fisheye-previous-frame’, combined: use the arrow keys or mouse wheel to cycle the fisheye lens. I bind this to ‘C-x t e’ (“e” for “eye”). (See DoReMi for related Do Re Mi commands.)
  • ‘thumfr-dethumbify-all-frames’ – Restore all thumbnails to full size. They return to the same states they were in before they were thumbified.
  • ‘thumfr-toggle-thumbnail-frame’ – Thumbify or dethumbify an individual frame. I bind this to `[S-mouse-3]’ – just click a frame to shrink or restore it. This command combines the effect of commands ‘thumfr-thumbify-frame’ and ‘thumfr-dethumbify-frame’ (see next).
  • ‘thumfr-thumbify-frame’ – Thumbify an individual frame.
  • ‘thumfr-thumbify-frame-upon-event’ – Thumbify a frame when a certain event is associated with it. Bind this to the window-manager “minimize” (iconify) button, to make it thumbify the frame instead – see KeyBindings, below.
  • ‘thumfr-dethumbify-frame’ – Dethumbify an individual frame.
  • ‘thumfr-iconify-thumbnail-frames’ – Iconify all thumbnail frames (only the thumbnail frames). Gets them out of the way without deleting them – get them back again with ‘deiconify-thumbnail-frames’.
  • ‘thumfr-deiconify-thumbnail-frames’ – Deiconify all thumbnail frames.
  • ‘thumfr-stack-thumbnail-frames’ – Arrange the thumbnail frames along an edge of the display. Arrange in order (e.g. alphabetically), if ‘thumfr-sort-function’ is non-‘nil’. By default, the left edge is used, and frames are arranged from top to bottom (option ‘thumfr-stack-display-edge’ controls this).
  • ‘thumfr-toggle-sort-thumbnail-frame-stack’ – Turn stack sorting on and off.
  • ‘iconify-frame’ – Redefined (advised) to thumbify.
  • ‘iconify-or-deiconify-frame’ – Redefined (advised) to thumbify or dethumbify. Bound to ‘C-z’, normally.
  • ‘thumfr-really-iconify-frame’ – Does what ‘iconify-frame’ used to do.
  • ‘thumfr-really-iconify-or-deiconify-frame’ – Does what ‘iconify-or-deiconify-frame’ used to do.
  • ‘raise-frame’ – Redefined to also dethumbify. Thanks to this, whenever you access, say, the *Help* frame or a file frame by clicking in Dired, the thumbnail is made full-size. The original ‘raise-frame’ behavior is available as ‘thumfr-only-raise-frame’ (only useful for thumbnails, since dethumbify has no effect on non-thumbnails).

Key Bindings

By default, standard iconifying bindings such as ‘C-z’ thumbify/dethumbify instead. The following are additional, suggested bindings:

 (global-set-key [S-mouse-3] 'thumfr-toggle-thumbnail-frame)
 (global-set-key [C-S-mouse-3] 'thumfr-thumbify-other-frames)
 (global-set-key [(shift control ?z)] 'thumfr-thumbify-other-frames)
 (global-set-key [(control meta ?z)] 'thumfr-really-iconify-or-deiconify-frame)
 ;; Bind window-manager "minimize" button, so it thumbifies instead.
 (define-key special-event-map [iconify-frame] 'thumfr-thumbify-frame-upon-event)
 
 ;; Add `doremi-thumbnail-frames' to the Do Re Mi commands - see library `doremi-frm.el'.
 (defalias 'doremi-prefix (make-sparse-keymap))
 (defvar doremi-map (symbol-function 'doremi-prefix) "Keymap for Do Re Mi commands.")
 (define-key global-map "\C-xt" 'doremi-prefix)
 (define-key global-map "\C-xte" 'thumfr-doremi-thumbnail-frames) ; "Eye"

In addition, I use the following bindings. The first three get rid of everything and then bring it all back as it was. These commands are defined in library frame-cmds.el .

 (global-set-key [(control meta shift ?z)] 'show-hide)
 (global-set-key [(control ?x) (control ?z)] 'iconify-everything)
 (global-set-key [C-down-mouse-1] 'mouse-show-hide-mark-unmark)
 (global-set-key [mode-line mouse-3] 'mouse-iconify/map-frame)
 (global-set-key [(control ?z)] 'iconify/map-frame)

If you want a key to iconify individual frames, bind ‘really-iconify-or-deiconify-frame’.

User Options (Variables)

These options control the behavior and appearance of thumbnail frames:

  • ‘thumfr-font-difference’ – Change the value of this parameter to change the thumbnail size.
  • ‘thumfr-frame-parameters’ – Frame parameters of thumbnail frames. This is what removes (or adds) things like the menu bar from thumbnail frames. By default, ‘thumfr-frame-parameters’ gives you thumbnail frames that:
    • have no menu bar or tool bar
    • have a 6x6-pixel scroll bar
    • are 30% transparent when not selected (opaque when selected)
  • ‘thumfr-thumbify-dont-iconify-flag’ – Set this to ‘nil’ if you do not want thumbifying to replace iconifying generally. With this non-‘nil’ (default value), commands ‘iconify-frame’ and ‘iconify-or-deiconify-frame’ thumbify/dethumbify.
  • ‘thumfr-sort-function’ – Function to use for sorting the stacked thumbnail frames. If ‘nil’, then no sorting is done. Default value is ‘thumfr-sort-by-name’, which sorts in alphabetical order. Another possible value is ‘thumfr-sort-by-window-id’, which sorts by the ‘window-id’ frame parameter – that parameter can be used as as a time surrogate in some contexts.
  • ‘thumfr-stack-display-edge’ – Display edge to stack thumbnail frames along. Default value is `left+down’, meaning arrange thumbnail frames along the left edge from top to bottom. Any edge (left, right, top, bottom) and any direction (up, down, to-left, to-right) can be specified.
  • ‘window-mgr-title-bar-pixel-width’ – Width of frame title bar provided by window manager, in pixels. (Emacs cannot determine this, so you must specify it.) Default value is 30.
  • ‘thumfr-rename-when-thumbify-flag’ – Set this to ‘nil’ if you do not want thumbifying to also rename the frame to the name of its current buffer (in the selected window).

See Also

Discussion / Feedback

Your comments and questions here, please:

NicFerrier says: I wish we could have an ELPA package for this; it’s a lot of depends.

Can’t have a package for every combination of libraries. ;-) However, there was really no need for me to have hard-required library doremi-frm.el . I’ve removed that – it is needed now only when (if) you invoke command ‘doremi-thumbnail-frames’.

So now there are only two libraries strictly needed by thumb-frm.el :

If you do want to use command ‘doremi-thumbnail-frames’, then you will also need these libraries:

FWIW:

Libraries faces+.el and ring+.el just extend standard libraries faces.el and ring.el a bit, and library hexrgb.el has general-purpose color manipulation functions. All three are used by multiple libraries on the wiki (as are frame-fns.el and frame-cmds.el). Library doremi.el is also a general feature that is used by a dozen or so libraries on the wiki. It is only doremi-frm.el that is a bit specialized.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I should have removed that hard dependency long ago. HTH. – DrewAdams

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