When you use the command C-x o (other-window) to select
some other window, it moves through live windows in a specific order.
For any given configuration of windows, this order never varies. It
is called the cyclic ordering of windows.
The ordering is determined by a depth-first traversal of each frame’s window tree, retrieving the live windows which are the leaf nodes of the tree (see Windows and Frames). If the minibuffer is active, the minibuffer window is included too. The ordering is cyclic, so the last window in the sequence is followed by the first one.
This function returns a live window, the one following window in
the cyclic ordering of windows. window should be a live window;
if omitted or nil, it defaults to the selected window.
The optional argument minibuf specifies whether minibuffer windows
should be included in the cyclic ordering. Normally, when minibuf
is nil, a minibuffer window is included only if it is currently
active; this matches the behavior of C-x o. (Note that a
minibuffer window is active as long as its minibuffer is in use; see
Minibuffers).
If minibuf is t, the cyclic ordering includes all
minibuffer windows. If minibuf is neither t nor
nil, minibuffer windows are not included even if they are active.
The optional argument all-frames specifies which frames to consider:
nil
means to consider windows on window’s frame. If the minibuffer
window is considered (as specified by the minibuf argument),
then frames that share the minibuffer window are considered too.
t
means to consider windows on all existing frames.
visible
means to consider windows on all visible frames.
If more than one frame is considered, the cyclic ordering is obtained by appending the orderings for those frames, in the same order as the list of all live frames (see Finding All Frames).
This function returns a live window, the one preceding window in
the cyclic ordering of windows. The other arguments are handled like
in next-window.
This function selects a live window, one count places from the selected window in the cyclic ordering of windows. If count is a positive number, it skips count windows forwards; if count is negative, it skips −count windows backwards; if count is zero, that simply re-selects the selected window. When called interactively, count is the numeric prefix argument.
The optional argument all-frames has the same meaning as in
next-window, like a nil minibuf argument to
next-window.
This function does not select a window that has a non-nil
no-other-window window parameter (see Window Parameters),
provided that ignore-window-parameters is nil.
If the other-window parameter of the selected window is a
function, and ignore-window-parameters is nil, that
function will be called with the arguments count and
all-frames instead of the normal operation of this function.
This function calls the function fun once for each live window, with the window as the argument.
It follows the cyclic ordering of windows. The optional arguments
minibuf and all-frames specify the set of windows
included; these have the same arguments as in next-window. If
all-frames specifies a frame, the first window walked is the
first window on that frame (the one returned by
frame-first-window), not necessarily the selected window.
If fun changes the window configuration by splitting or deleting windows, that does not alter the set of windows walked, which is determined prior to calling fun for the first time.
This function returns t if the selected window is the only live
window, and nil otherwise.
If the minibuffer window is active, it is normally considered (so that
this function returns nil). However, if the optional argument
no-mini is non-nil, the minibuffer window is ignored even
if active. The optional argument all-frames has the same
meaning as for next-window.
The following functions return a window which satisfies some criterion, without selecting it:
This function returns a live window which is heuristically the least
recently used one. The least recently used window is the least
recently selected one—the window whose use time is less than the use
time of all other live windows (see Selecting Windows). The
optional argument all-frames has the same meaning as in
next-window.
If any full-width windows are present, only those windows are
considered. A minibuffer window is never a candidate. A dedicated
window (see Dedicated Windows) is never a candidate unless the
optional argument dedicated is non-nil. The selected
window is never returned, unless it is the only candidate. However, if
the optional argument not-selected is non-nil, this
function returns nil in that case. The optional argument
no-other, if non-nil, means to never return a window whose
no-other-window parameter is non-nil.
This function is like get-lru-window, but it returns the most
recently used window instead. The most recently used window is
the most recently selected one—the window whose use time exceeds the
use time of all other live windows (see Selecting Windows). The
meaning of the arguments is the same as for get-lru-window.
Since in practice the most recently used window is always the selected
one, it usually makes sense to call this function with a non-nil
not-selected argument only.
This function returns the window with the largest area (height times
width). If there are two candidate windows of the same size, it prefers
the one that comes first in the cyclic ordering of windows, starting
from the selected window. The meaning of the arguments is the same as
for get-lru-window.
This function calls the function predicate for each of the
windows in the cyclic order of windows in turn, passing it the window
as an argument. If the predicate returns non-nil for any
window, this function stops and returns that window. If no such
window is found, the return value is default (which defaults to
nil).
The optional arguments minibuf and all-frames specify the
windows to search, and have the same meanings as in
next-window.