4

The following show the message "something" in the echo area immediately, and this message remains there unless I do a second action (e.g. moving the cursor, executing anther command etc)

(message "something")

I would like that the message to not appear immediately, but after a delay of few second (say 2 seconds) and to automatically disappear after few second (say 3 second). Is this possible?

To be precise I would like that in the first delay of 2 seconds, I would able to see other system messages (if any).

|improve this question
  • The display of a message for a finite period of time is already treated there: emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/18479/…. If you display something temporarily you should restore the old message afterwards. Therefore, save what you get via (current-message) and view it afterwards via (message ...). – Tobias Oct 29 '16 at 18:02
  • 1
    Thanks for the link. That question was about modeline.Here is about the echo area. They are related though not identical. – Name Oct 29 '16 at 18:33
  • Oh, yes right you are. Sorry, for the confusion. When I read the other question I thought about the difference of minibuffer and echo area and got into that trap. Nevertheless, the other part of the comment about (current-message) is worth to think about. – Tobias Oct 29 '16 at 18:44
3

You could try something like:

(run-with-timer 2 nil
        (lambda ()
          (message "Some message")
          (run-with-timer 3 nil
                  (lambda ()
                    (message nil)))))

run-with-timer will call a function of your choice after a delay (there's a run-with-idle-timer variant if you want to only show the message when Emacs is idle). I've used lambda here to create an anonymous function with the body of code I want to run.

The example shows a message then schedules a second timer to clear the echo-area.

This is a bit clumsy since there might be somebody else's message in the echo area by the time the second timer fires, so you may end up clearing a different message. There's probably a way to avoid that with some more work.

Edit: changed (message "") to (message nil) to clear the echo-area and return to showing any minibuffer contents (thanks Drew!)

|improve this answer
  • Use (message nil), to clear the message and let the contents of the minibuffer show. – Drew Oct 29 '16 at 17:18
  • The documentation of this function (25.1) suggests that these invocations are equivalent. – politza Oct 29 '16 at 18:50
  • I confirm that this solution works. Let me wait for possible alternative solution. – Name Oct 29 '16 at 19:12
  • How can we make this the default behavior for all kinds of echoed text including messages? I mean, let them disappear after a delay. – godblessfq Apr 19 at 8:55
  • Seems the variable minibuffer-message-timeout should work out of the box, but it doesn't. I have come up with this: (fset 'original-message (symbol-function 'message)) (defun clear-message (&rest args) (run-with-timer 2 nil (lambda () (original-message nil)))) you can test it with (run-with-timer 2 nil (lambda () (message "Some message"))) Maybe it's better to set inhibit-message at entry and exit of the minibuffer – godblessfq Apr 19 at 11:02

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.