When right- or middle-clicking on a headline generated in the agenda, org will open a buffer with the file containing that headline. That headline will be centered in the buffer.
How can I make it so that clicking on an agenda link aligns the headline to the top of the buffer rather than the center?
I found that I could do this manually by customizing recenter-positions and then hitting C l (recenter-top-bottom), but I really would like this to happen automatically.
Using the function describe-key, we can trace org-agenda-goto-mouse to org-agenda-goto, and from there we can examine the function in the org-agenda.el library to see what makes it tick. The re-centering command is hard-coded as (recenter (/ (window-height) 2)), which means it cannot be easily controlled by the user with an optional argument or by customizing a variable. In general, functions an be redefined by require-ing the library followed by the newly defined function with the same name: (require 'org-agenda) (defun org-agenda-goto (&optional highlight) "Go to the Org-mode file which contains the item at point." ...) Change the portion relating to recentering. The doc-string for recenter describes the available methods of controling the behavior of said function.
During the process of inspecting org-agenda-goto, we learned that org-agenda-after-show-hook is called at the tail-end. A less efficient alternative approach to modifying org-agenda-goto would be to add new behavior to the aforementioned hook -- however, that would essentially call again recenter to fix the undesired previous call.
org-agenda-goto, since it does not use a variable or argument to control recentering -- instead, it uses(recenter (/ (window-height) 2))If we describe the middle-mouse-click withdescribe-key, we see that it triggersorg-agenda-goto-mouseIf we look at that function, we see that it usesorg-agenda-goto, and if we look at that function, we see a modification of said function would be required based on the foregoing line of code dealing with recentering.(require 'org-agenda) (defun org-agenda-goto (&optional highlight) "Go to the Org-mode file which contains the item at point." ...)Change the portion relating to recentering. Or, if you are an anti-modification believer in the holy scriptureorg-modesource code, you can use theorg-agenda-after-show-hookto recenter again using whatever you like -- note that this is technically inefficient considering that recentering could have been customized by modifyingorg-agenda-goto.org-agenda-gotoworked like a charm. Want to post that as an answer?