Re: GUI X-FreeDesktop integration

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 13:54:11 +0100 (BST)
> From: Peter Oliver <p.d.oliver@mavit.org.uk>
> cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > This is a backward-incompatible change, so why should it be the
> > default, and not the alternative action via right-click?
> 
> As argued by others earlier in the thread, this is consistent with the behaviour of other applications that are capable of opening multiple documents in the same window, such as Firefox or Gedit.

I understand, but it still doesn't sound to me like a reason good
enough to make such a serious change in the behavior of Emacs.  IMO,
it is better to introduce this as an optional behavior for now, and
only make it the default much later, if many people come to expect
that.

> So, we can say that users who mostly launch things by clicking on icons in their desktops will be likely to expect things to work this way.  Conversely, it seems reasonable to worry less about catering for people who do not have this expectation, because we can infer that they rarely click on the icons.

I don't see how you can make that conclusion with such certainty.  Not
all the applications behave in that way, so it's quite possible that
people don't expect every application to do it.  Thus, it isn't a
catastrophe that Emacs behaves like it does, and like it did until
now.

> > And anyway,
> > wouldn't some people be surprised to see emacsclient frame when they
> > expected a new instance of Emacs, without their say-so?
> 
> My feeling is that plenty of people will find the current behaviour surprising, too.  Opening multiple instances of emacs seems like a fairly niche thing to want to do, unless, say, you’re launching it with -Q, in which case you need to run it from the command line anyway.

I hear quite a few people run at least two instances of Emacs, for
example if they don't want Gnus fetching new articles and email to
freeze the interactive session for prolonged times.  And there can be
other similar reasons to do the same.

We don't automatically make new options be the default unless the old
behavior makes absolutely no sense or is otherwise dangerous or not
useful.  I don't see this case matching any of that, so IMO we
shouldn't make this behavior the default right away.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this aspect?