From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
To: rms@gnu.org
Cc: eliz@gnu.org, cyd@stupidchicken.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:31:54 +0900 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87iqp0syet.fsf@xemacs.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <E1LHn3H-0000gH-U8@fencepost.gnu.org>
Richard M Stallman writes:
> I used to agree with you, but The Kids These Days (ie, those who have
> grown up with WIMPy interfaces) think of a window as a (foreground)
> process. If the window goes away, the process stops.
>
> But that is generally false. For instance, if you iconify a
> terminal, the processes running in it do not stop.
Sure. But that's machine-centric thinking. Here, we're discussing
the user interface. From the user's point of view, the *user
interaction process* stops, and that is generally all the user cares
about when suspending a process: "Get out of my face so I can do
something else I want to do!!!" If the process wants to do some
background work, how often would the user object?
I don't care what the interface is called. But my feeling is that the
primary UI operation here is "withdrawing a frame", and that whether
the process gets STOPed or not is an implementation detail. For
example, in a terminal-based emacs you could (in theory) do
M-x long-running-process RET
C-z
bg %emacs
# do other work
fg %emacs
to the same effect as iconifying a GUI window. In fact, a little
magic with keyboard macros and timers or subprocesses could presumably
allow us to write `execute-key-sequence-and-background-emacs', which
GUI-habituated users might prefer to bind to C-z for use in a
terminal-based environment. (Don't take that entirely seriously, I
haven't thought it through.)
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2008-12-31 5:31 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 43+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2008-12-27 18:23 Terminology in multi-tty primitives Eli Zaretskii
2008-12-28 1:00 ` Chong Yidong
2008-12-28 4:09 ` Eli Zaretskii
2008-12-28 4:28 ` Chong Yidong
2008-12-28 19:18 ` Eli Zaretskii
2008-12-28 19:43 ` Juanma Barranquero
2008-12-29 5:31 ` Chong Yidong
2008-12-29 19:26 ` Eli Zaretskii
2008-12-29 22:09 ` Richard M Stallman
2008-12-30 2:18 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2008-12-30 22:26 ` Richard M Stallman
2008-12-31 2:06 ` Stefan Monnier
2008-12-31 2:20 ` Dan Nicolaescu
2008-12-31 3:20 ` Stefan Monnier
2008-12-31 4:29 ` Eli Zaretskii
2008-12-31 6:25 ` Stefan Monnier
2008-12-31 18:47 ` Eli Zaretskii
2008-12-31 21:39 ` Dan Nicolaescu
2008-12-31 21:48 ` Eli Zaretskii
2008-12-31 21:55 ` Dan Nicolaescu
2008-12-31 22:10 ` Eli Zaretskii
2008-12-31 23:03 ` Dan Nicolaescu
2008-12-31 16:38 ` Richard M Stallman
2008-12-31 17:22 ` Stefan Monnier
2008-12-31 19:05 ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-01-01 17:13 ` Stefan Monnier
2009-01-02 13:56 ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-01-03 2:32 ` Stefan Monnier
2009-01-03 9:59 ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-01-04 3:14 ` Stefan Monnier
2009-01-04 3:29 ` Chetan Pandya
2009-01-04 3:41 ` Jason Rumney
2009-01-04 4:54 ` Chetan Pandya
2008-12-30 22:27 ` Richard M Stallman
2008-12-31 5:31 ` Stephen J. Turnbull [this message]
2008-12-31 6:28 ` Stefan Monnier
2008-12-31 8:33 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2008-12-31 14:18 ` Chong Yidong
2008-12-31 15:42 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2008-12-28 17:29 ` Richard M Stallman
2008-12-28 19:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2008-12-30 19:53 ` Stefan Monnier
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2008-12-27 18:16 Eli Zaretskii
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