Thanks for the comments! My screen is large, and I use the space the way Ingo describes, putting the edit buffer in the top left corner. But I'd be interested to have the extra option for a while and see if I do find this as useful as it now seems; when I find the time, I may be able to find out how to do this.
As for acme, I agree that its auto layout works well. In particular I like how you can make the window you are concentrating on take up the whole column and restore that column's stack of windows afterward. Although the window you enlarged ends up on top, and not necessarily in its original position, in acme that is far less important than it might be in sam. (And in cases where one cares sufficiently about fixed places one can always B2 on Sort.) An edit buffer in acme would be very interesting to experiment with. Mark.
