Re: should frame names be unique?

[Damon Permezel <permezel@mac.com>]

Certain emacs commands (menu-bar buffer frames, for example) did not
work well with the default frame naming mechanism.  Attempts to use
the frame naming mechanism to address this, whilst keeping the "%b"
feature, did not work.  I believe that this problem has been
addressed, altough I have not had occasion to confirm this.

Whether the default frame naming mechanism results in unique names is
another issue.

I do believe that any command that produces a list of frames must
assign unique identifiers to the frames so that when a user selects a
frame to be acted upon, using a name so presented, precisely the frame
the user intends is the target of the command.

Should emacs itself enforce unique frame names?  I am not sure,
however, the default behavior could be changed so that frame names do
default to unique, user-friendly ones.

Frame names can be (are currently) dynamic.  Default xdisp.c platforms
have "%b" which is dynamic, and can result in duplicate name confusion.

What I desired was to be able to enforce a static portion, unique for
each frame, plus a dynamic portion, and with the fix I believe to be
in emacs 23, I believe I have that, although it takes me more work.

It might be sufficient for most users to have the default
frame-title-format, which is currently, on many platforms, "%b" when
multiple frames are present, be something else, such as "%@ %b" where
"%@" (select something more appropriate than @) will be expanded to
some user-friendly, static and unique frame identifier.

(multiple-frames "%@ - %b" ("" invocation-name "@" system-name))

where %@ expands into the static frame unique portion of the name, and  
"%b"
the dynamic (in this example).

Simply add the '%@' expansion and change the icon-title-format string  
in xdisp.c.

Have not looked at any non-xdisp.c platforms.

Cheers,
Damon Permezel
permezel@mac.com

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