Re: Infrastructural complexity.

[Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net>]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 09:38 +0200, martin rudalics wrote:
> >> I'd consider a primary frame an artifact useful for tiling and for
>  >> giving the window manager something with a title, a menubar, and a
>  >> handler for resize requests to play around.  Nothing more.
>  >
>  > I think a primary frame should also have the "edit area".
>  > That is, not every Emacs window exists within an "attached
>  > frame" - some exist within primary frames.
> 
> It wouldn't be too difficult to make Emacs windows only exist within
> "attached frames" aka as frames. 


I agree that that would not be difficult.  
I think, however, that that would be a mistake
in the design.  In every window system window
there should be a set of Emacs windows for which
the selected frame corresponds to the window
system window.  If one of those Emacs windows
is selected then minimizing the corresponding
frame (etc.) should have its effect on the window
system window (and by extension on any "attached
frames").

The "edit area" frame should, at least from
the perspective of elisp and interactive 
commands, be "the frame which corresponds to 
the window system window".   



>  > That's based on the use cases for these features.
>  > The "edit area" conceptually corresponds to the frame
>  > which represents the entire window system window.
>  >
>  > For example, if an elisp programs hides the selected
>  > frame and the selected frame is a control panel, then
>  > just that control panel is hidden.
> 
> I suppose hiding a control panel would affect the appearance of the
> containing primary frame.

Yes.  It would contract the control panel, enlarging
the other attached frames and/or the edit area.  
There are two sets of diagrams in my "16" messages
from a ways back.  The second set of diagrams (second
message) illustrates.



>  > If the program
>  > hides the frame from the edit area, that should minimize
>  > the window system window and thereby effectively hide
>  > all attached frames (control panels).
> 
> That would be the simple case.

Minimizing the frame from the edit area minimizes
the attached frames and changes the window system
window.  Minimizing an attached frame just changes 
the visibility of that attached frame within a 
window system window, leaving the window system window
otherwise unaffected.

-t


> martin