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Specify window layout in emacs on command line

I would like to be able to specify the layout of the Emacs window when starting from the command line.

In particular, I call "emacs file1 file2 file3 file4" and, for example, would like to see

+---------+                             +--------+
|  file1  |                             |  buff  |
|         |                             |  list  |
+---------+    instead of the default   +--------+  that I see currently
|         |                             |        |
|  file3  |                             |  file4 |
+---------+                             +--------+

My emacs is GNU Emacs 24.0.91.1 and I do not use emacsclient.

Note that I do not want changes to be permanent. That is why I am asking for command line solutions.

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1 answer

Put the following in layout.el

(setq inhibit-startup-screen t)

(defun ordered-window-list-aux (tree)
  (if (windowp tree)
      (list tree)
    (append (ordered-window-list-aux (nth 2 tree))
            (ordered-window-list-aux (nth 3 tree)))))

(defun ordered-window-list ()
  "Lists windows from top to bottom, left to right."
  (ordered-window-list-aux
   (car (window-tree))))

(require 'cl)

(defun fill-windows ()
  "Make window list display recent buffer."
  (mapcar*
   (lambda (win buf)
     (set-window-buffer win buf))
   (nreverse (ordered-window-list))
   (buffer-list)))

(delete-other-windows)

;; your window configuration
(split-window-horizontally)
(split-window-vertically)

;; Make window list display recent buffer
(fill-windows)

Then

emacs blah foo bar --load layout.el

The only thing you need to do is customize the layout the way you want using a combination of the following functions:

(split-window-horizontally)
(split-window-vertically)
(other-windows 1)
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