How to force Emacs not to display buffer in a specific window?

Question

My windows configuration looks like this:

          +----------+-----------+
      |          |           |
      |          |           |
      |          |           |
      |          |           |
      |          |           |
      |          +-----------+
      |          |           |
      +----------+-----------+

And I use the lower right window for special displays (like help, completion etc.), but emacs insists on using that window when I call commands (find-file-other-window, etc.) that use display-buffer, and resize that window as well. It's annoying... Is there a way that I can force emacs NOT to use that windows? I was thinking of advising display-buffer, but it's a function in c. Any thoughts on this?

EDIT:

Based heavily on Trey's answer, this is what works for me so far:

(setq special-display-function 'my-display-buffer)
(setq special-display-regexps '(".*"))

(defun display-special-buffer (buf)
  "put the special buffers in the right spot (bottom rigt)"
    (let ((target-window (window-at (- (frame-width) 4) (- (frame-height) 4)))
          (pop-up-windows t))
      (set-window-buffer target-window buf)
      target-window))

(defun my-display-buffer (buf)
  "put all buffers in a window other than the one in the bottom right"
  (message (buffer-name  buf))
  (if (member (buffer-name buf) special-display-buffer-names)
      (display-special-buffer buf)
      (progn
        (let ((pop-up-windows t)
              (windows (delete (window-at (- (frame-width) 4) (- (frame-height) 4))
                         (delete (minibuffer-window) (window-list)))))
          (message (buffer-name (window-buffer (car windows))))
          (set-window-buffer (car (cdr windows)) buf)
          (car (cdr windows))))))

Answer 1

Well, someone already asked the same question for completion. And I wrote up an answer that seemed to work pretty well.

It looks like you could use that same solution, except instead of adding to special-display-buffer-names, you can use the variable special-display-regexps. So something along the lines of:

(add-to-list 'special-display-regexps '(".*" my-display-buffers))

(defun my-display-buffers (buf)
  "put all buffers in a window other than the one in the bottom right"
  (let ((windows (delete (window-at (- (frame-width) 2) (- (frame-height) 4))
                         (delete (minibuffer-window) (window-list))))
    (if (<= 2 (length windows))
        (progn 
          (select-window (cadr windows))
          (split-window-vertically)))
    (let ((pop-up-windows t))
      (set-window-buffer (car windows) buf)
      (car windows)))))

Obviously you'll have to modify the regexp to not match the *Help* and other buffers that you actually want in the lower right window.

Regarding advising display-buffer, that would work. You can advise functions written in c, advice works in pretty much every case you'd want except when functions are called from c, or advising macros (which doesn't work b/c the macros are generally already expanded everywhere they're used).

Answer 2

Perhaps something like this could work:

(defun display-buffer-avoiding-lr-corner (buffer &optional not-this-window)
  (save-selected-window
    (when (buffer-file-name buffer)
      (select-window (window-at (- (frame-width) 1)
                                (- (frame-height) 2))))
    (let ((display-buffer-function nil))
      (display-buffer buffer not-this-window))))

(setq display-buffer-function 'display-buffer-avoiding-lr-corner)

Answer 3

I was thinking of advising display-buffer, but it's a function in c.

"display-buffer is an interactive Lisp function in `window.el'."

Also, you can advise C functions anyway.

Answer 4

Maybe it will make sense for you to make this lower right window dedicated by set-window-dedicated-p. Then this window will be ignored in operations like find-file-other-window as you want.