Re: suggested feature -- console-mode frame title sets Xterm title

[Martin Pool <mbp@sourcefrog.net>]

On  4 Oct 2003, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>     Sorry, I meant select-frame-by-name.
> 
>     >       For multi-frame text terminals the names
>     >     used to be F%d, but now they're "full" names, probably including the
>     >     name of the buffer.
> 
> Now I understand.  But I think this is an undesirable
> side effect that the user will notice.  Can you find a way
> to avoid altering these names?

I've thought about this and I can't think of a completely satisfactory
way to reconcile the differences between window-system and text frames
in the existing documented behaviour.

I don't feel qualified to decide what to break.  If you let me know
how you would like it to behave I'll try to write a patch.

I'd guess the number of people using multiple frames on a text
terminal is fairly small, though non-zero.  I would also guess that
more than half the people using emacs in termcap mode are doing so
from some kind of terminal emulator under a window system (xterm,
putty, etc) and so could benefit from seeing the title.

If I had to decide, I would probably just remove the 'F%d' behaviour.
(Specifically, remove that indicator from the toolbar, and remove it
as the default name for tty frames.)  This is a bit disturbing to
people who were accustomed to those features, but it does not really
remove any functionality, as they can still name frames by hand and
switch between them.  I'd choose this because in the long term it's
better to move towards internal consistency at the price of sometimes
breaking things.

In some ways this is an improvement: when people have multiple frames,
they will by default be named using buffer names, which are more
meaningful than F%d.  If people give their frames explicit names
either by hand or from code then those names will work the same way.
C-x 5 commands will also still be the same.

I haven't ever seriously used multiple termcap frames.  Maybe somebody
who does use them has an opinion.

Alternatively we could add an option to give tty frames these names as
'explicit names'.  I would probably have it off by default, because
for users who weren't specifically using this feature they're less
friendly than the names produced by frame-title-format.

Yet another option would be to introduce a new user-visible concept of
a "frame number".  That wouldn't preserve the exact same behaviour and
I'm not sure it would be useful, but if you really want to preserve
F%d it might be the best way.

On the whole I think just making the behaviour the same will please
many people, and annnoy fairly few, and be good for the code.  But let
me know what you want and I'll write it.

-- 
Martin