> From: Robert Weiner <rsw@gnu.org>
> Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2017 13:57:34 -0500
> Cc: Alan Third <alan@idiocy.org>, emacs-devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
>
> > Ok, that is an example of why I am advocating for a potentially
> > new function that let's a programmer say "display the latest
> > contents of this window with no other Emacs window or frame
> > obscuring it".
>
> That cannot be done in general, because redisplaying a window could
> very well affect other windows. One example of that is TTY frame
> display;
>
> Only one frame is visible on a tty at a time, so in
> my use case, this would have to be the frame that
> displays the window. Why is this a problem?
TTY redisplay deals with the entire frame, so it cannot redraw a
single window.
> another is a case where the window was shrunk.
>
> Why can a shrunk window not be displayed within the
> topmost frame? You are giving examples without explaining
> why they conflict with the desired goal?
I gave examples that explain why Emacs cannot be in general told to
redraw a single window. Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought this is
what you were trying to accomplish ("display the latest contents of
this window").
> So you are saying Emacs provides no way for the programmer
> to ensure that a window is wholly displayed on screen and
> fully updated even when Emacs is the only application in use?
Not if you want to tell Emacs to display _only_ one window.
> I had just dealt with many multi-frame scenarios
> before and never had to call redisplay directly so it seemed
> odd that I had to now.
That's because normally, you don't need to. Having to display changes
during the command's execution is a rare use case.