Dedicate an Emacs Window to Its Buffer

Before I start writing in Org, I dedicate the window. This "protects" the content, preventing it from being replaced by something else. It ensures I can stay focused on my writing no matter what other buffers Emacs opens.

My usual workflow is to display help on the functions I write about. Emacs opens the help buffer in another window. That's good. But then if I click on the link to the source code that help references, that file will open in my writing window, and I lose focus. Dedicating the window prevents this.

I could dedicate a window manually by invoking toggle-window-dedicated (bound to C-x w d) every time I start writing. But because I clock in to anything I'm serious about, I let org-clock-in-hook to do it for me as shown below. Note that the hook calls set-window-dedicated-p rather than toggle-window-dedicated because the latter will un-dedicate a window that's already dedicated. I could configure org-clock-out-hook to un-dedicate the window; I'm debating whether it's necessary.

(add-hook 'org-clock-in-hook (lambda () (set-window-dedicated-p nil t)))

Interestingly, while I was writing this, JTR published his "Gems" article in which he writes about setting help-window-keep-selected to true "to keep help in its own dedicated window, so it won’t open in a separate window once we follow a link."¹ Perhaps that’s his approach to the same issue.

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¹ Emacs Config Gems - Part 3