Re: icon-title-format vs. frame-title-format (Bug#61496)

[Tobias Bading <tbading@web.de>]

Oh god, what have I done? XD

But holding back isn’t one of my strong suites, so here goes nothin’…

The X Window System may have introduced and/or (re)used certain terms, like
“normal” and “iconic” for different states of top-level windows, but that
was ages ago. That the term “iconic” was chosen is very unfortunate IMHO.
It contains the word “icon” and thus suggests/implies that a currently
invisible window is represented by some icon somewhere. Window managers like
mwm may have chosen to actually represent invisible windows this way back
then. Today, a lot of free software desktop environments, window systems,
window managers etc are available. Some may present invisible windows as
icons, others as buttons in window lists, a thumbnail in a dock, or
whatever. Some may not show them at all, except for when you use some
keyboard shortcut to switch between windows. Not to mention states somewhere
between visible and unvisible, like a window that has been rolled up so that
only its title bar remains. Most of those representations for invisible
windows weren’t even invented yet when the X developers chose to use the
term “iconic”.

On 05.05.23 02:15, Po Lu wrote:
>> What's wrong with saying "iconified or minimized"?
>
> Because ``minimization'' is a form of iconification.
>
>> […]
>
> ``minimize'' is not modern terminology.  It is simply terminology used
> by proprietary window systems.

I wasn’t aware that “minimized” was considered to be a proprietary term,
or a term created by a vendor of proprietary software. To me it is simply
an appropriate term to describe a top-level window that is currently not
visible, no matter how the user’s desktop environment of choice represents
such a window. It doesn’t imply that icons are used. It simply means that
the window (or all windows of that application together) is represented in
some minimal or small form. So to me the term “minimized” makes more sense
than “iconic”.

On 05.05.23 07:29, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> ``minimize'' […]
>
> It is nowadays used by some GNU/Linux desktops (which basically
> copycat everything that Windows introduces, as if there are no other
> UI ideas under the sun).

That global menu bar feature in GTK / GNOME 3 — whatever it’s official name
in GTK may be — wasn’t copied from Microsoft, it was copied from Apple.
The same goes for that Spotlight search emulator I’d say.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with free software providing useful
features that remind me of features I have seen somewhere else before.
Microsoft and Apple may have their ©s, ®s, ™s and whatnot, but that’s a
different story. What I *do* have a problem with is free software like GTK
and GNOME copying Apple’s goddamn “use our software exactly as we provide it
— or don’t use it at all” attitude. Why did I stick with GNOME 2 as long as
humanly possible and then switched to MATE? Because GNOME 2 and Compiz were
customizable as f*ck. Every user had the freedom of choice to use whatever
look & feel and features they wanted. Last I checked GNOME 3 had no support
for panels at all and that alone make it unusable for me personally.

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.
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What were we talking about again?
Right, that frame-title-format doc string… XD
I didn’t intend to start a mega-thread about terminology. If Emacs doc
strings had see-also sections I would have simply asked to please put a
“See also: icon-title-format” into frame-title-format’s doc string.
I’m happy with the added (setq icon-title-format t) in my ~/.emacs, which
made Emacs 29 behave like Emacs 26.3. I just thought a little hint in the
doc string might help other people who upgrade their Emacs like me and
wonder about those changing window titles.

Tobias