Panes

rune.pane.create("chat")                    -- optional; write auto-creates
rune.pane.write("chat", styled_text)
rune.pane.toggle("chat")                    -- flip visibility (panes start hidden)
rune.pane.show("chat")                      -- or set it outright
rune.pane.hide("chat")
rune.pane.clear("chat")

Dock a pane via the layout. Since rune.ui.layout replaces the whole layout, keep the bottom dock in it:

rune.ui.layout({
    top    = { { name = "chat", height = 10 } },
    bottom = { "input", "status" },
})

A docked pane renders a title header and a bottom border, which use two of its height lines. Panes start hidden; toggle shows them. A hidden pane keeps accumulating writes (the buffer is capped at 1000 lines), so toggling it back shows the recent history. Lines longer than the pane width soft-wrap, and re-fit when the terminal resizes.

Scrolling

Every pane scrolls its own buffer; the special name "main" is the output viewport (that’s what the default PageUp/PageDown/Ctrl+Home/Ctrl+End binds target). Aim a pane with binds of your own:

rune.bind("shift+pageup",   function() rune.pane.scroll_up("chat", 5) end)
rune.bind("shift+pagedown", function() rune.pane.scroll_down("chat", 5) end)

While scrolled, the pane freezes on the history you’re reading and its header shows chat · scroll +N as new lines land; scroll_down past the end (or scroll_to_bottom) returns it to live tailing.

The mirror pattern

Panes work well when triggers copy (or move) categories of lines into them:

-- Copy: line stays in the main window AND lands in the pane
rune.trigger.regex("^(\\w+) tells you: (.+)$", function(m, ctx)
    rune.pane.write("chat", ctx.line:raw())
end)

-- Move: gag it from the main window, keep it in the pane
rune.trigger.regex("^\\[Auction\\]", function(m, ctx)
    rune.pane.write("auctions", ctx.line:raw())
    return false
end)

Bind a key to peek, as in the quake console recipe:

rune.bind("`", function() rune.pane.toggle("chat") end)

Related: rune.pane reference, Layout & UI, Triggers