Re: gnuplot vs. emacs' compile command

Re: gnuplot vs. emacs' compile command

[Richard Stallman]

    gnuplot end of the problem should be fixed.  It remains somewhat
    worrying, though, that Emacs would be so irresponsive while waiting for
    the subprocess to end --- not that many newbies would have known to try
    Ctrl-G to break it out of its busy-looping state.

It is not so bad as all that.  Many things in Emacs can loop, and people
need to know about C-g.

That doesn't mean there is no room for improvement here.  Perhaps Emacs
should use a different criterion.  But I am not sure what it should be.
(Currently it waits for all writers to close the pipe, and then for
termination of the original process.)

Re: gnuplot vs. emacs' compile command

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

On Sat, 24 May 2003, Richard Stallman wrote:

> It is not so bad as all that.  Many things in Emacs can loop, and people
> need to know about C-g.

Right.  But even so, a visible reminder might be helpful.  Since Emacs
won't react to _any_ user input except C-g in this situation, I think it
should announce this fact in a minibuffer message.

> That doesn't mean there is no room for improvement here.  Perhaps Emacs
> should use a different criterion.  But I am not sure what it should be.
> (Currently it waits for all writers to close the pipe, and then for
> termination of the original process.)

The criterion is fine, as far as I'm concerned.  At least gnuplot can be
taught to live with it.

What I'm less sure about is whether the wait loop for this subshell should
affect all the rest of Emacs, too.  At the moment, it blocks all user
interaction until the external process is finished, or C-g is pressed.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.

Re: gnuplot vs. emacs' compile command

[Richard Stallman]

    What I'm less sure about is whether the wait loop for this subshell should
    affect all the rest of Emacs, too.

What alternative do you have in mind?  We're talking about a
synchronous subprocess, which means that Emacs waits for it to finish.

Re: gnuplot vs. emacs' compile command

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

On Tue, 27 May 2003, Richard Stallman wrote:

> >  What I'm less sure about is whether the wait loop for this subshell
> >  should affect all the rest of Emacs, too.
>
> What alternative do you have in mind?

None in particular, unfortunately.

> We're talking about a synchronous subprocess, which means that Emacs
> waits for it to finish.

Hmmm... some imaginary demon keeps shouting "multithreading!" in my ear,
but I have no idea whether that's even remotely feasible.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.

Re: gnuplot vs. emacs' compile command

[Richard Stallman]

    > We're talking about a synchronous subprocess, which means that Emacs
    > waits for it to finish.

    Hmmm... some imaginary demon keeps shouting "multithreading!" in my ear,
    but I have no idea whether that's even remotely feasible.

Emacs already supports asynchronous subprocesses, but this is a
synchronous one, which is a different feature.