### 8.13 Typeout frames ¶

A “typeout frame” is a special Emacs frame which is used instead of the echo area (minibuffer) to display messages from SLIME commands. This is an optional feature. The advantage of a typeout frame over the echo area is that it can hold more text, it can be scrolled, and its contents don’t disappear when you press a key. All potentially long messages are sent to the typeout frame, such as argument lists, macro expansions, and so on.

`M-x slime-ensure-typeout-frame` ¶

  Ensure that a typeout frame exists, creating one if necessary.

If the typeout frame is closed then the echo area will be used again as usual.

To have a typeout frame created automatically at startup you should load the `slime-typeout-frame` package. (see Loading Contrib Packages.)

The variable `slime-typeout-frame-properties` specifies the height and possibly other properties of the frame. Its value is passed to `make-frame`. (See (elisp)Creating Frames.)