Better handling of reply configuration

[Reid Rivenburgh <reid@lanl.gov>]

One of the few areas where gnus is awkward is the handling of
frames/windows when replying to mail.  I've looked over the gnus
configuration capabilities, but either it doesn't offer quite enough
or I'm too ignorant to use it correctly (yes, probably the latter).  I
also searched in various places and came up basically empty.

The problem is that when replying, the reply buffer takes over the
frame.  If I want to refer back to the original message (if I haven't
yanked it into the reply) or look at a different message, I have to go
through some buffer switching and resizing contortions.

This can be solved by either:

1. Giving the reply its own frame.  This would work fine, but I've had
   a heck of a time getting the frame to go away (delete or iconify)
   when done and having the original frame be unaffected by the reply
   creation.  It would also be nice for general mail composition, not
   just replying.

2. Set up a configuration in a single frame such that the reply takes
   up only a portion of the frame, leaving the summary and article
   buffers visible (but probably reduced in size).  This ought to
   work, too, but there's a question of what happens to the reply
   buffer if I quit the summary to look in another group.  I tried the
   following, but I didn't know how the buffer-live-p split form
   syntax should look (the example in the manual only uses a single
   form after the if).  I think I'm on the right track....

(gnus-add-configuration
 '(reply
   (horizontal 1.0
	       (vertical 20
			 (if (buffer-live-p gnus-message-buffer)
			     '(list (summary .2)
				    (message 1.0 point))
			   '((summary .8 point)
			     (tree 1.0))))
	       (vertical 1.0
			 (article 1.0)))))

I thought I'd throw this out to the list in case anyone has solved the
problem.  Thanks in advance.

Reid