From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
To: Spencer Baugh <sbaugh@janestreet.com>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: A UI approach for making synchronous commands asynchronous
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 22:32:34 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <838rb1kv59.fsf@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <ierlef1rz8z.fsf@janestreet.com> (message from Spencer Baugh on Thu, 27 Jul 2023 14:22:04 -0400)
> From: Spencer Baugh <sbaugh@janestreet.com>
> Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 14:22:04 -0400
>
> Ideally the buffer would update incrementally with the new or removed
> names as they happen, and be fully updated once the rename is finished.
>
> That can be difficult to implement, though. And also, for some kinds of
> operations, it's not clear what the buffer should look like while the
> command is half-done.
>
> So here's another idea that would help with that: maybe we could have a
> kind of buffer-specific blocking. A "blocking" buffer would refuse all
> input and commands while it's "blocking", and it wouldn't update, but
> the user can switch to other buffers and edit them without a problem.
> So, buffer-specific commands wouldn't work, but commands like C-x b and
> C-x o would work. It might be kind of like how term-mode works today.
Here you already describe the same "blocking" or "locking" that was
discussed at length in the other thread about concurrency. Which I
think means that you are basically thinking about the same ideas with
the same issues and possible solutions. It is not a different set of
ideas.
> So in that world, the user would execute a dired rename operation, and
> then execute C-M-z to background it, and that would cause that dired
> buffer to stop responding while the rename is proceeding, while other
> buffers continue to work.
>
> One question is what happens to the user's input when the buffer
> "blocks". Today when Emacs as a whole is blocking, key input gets
> queued up and executed when Emacs resumes. Should the same happen for
> blocking buffers? Or maybe any key input should just immediately result
> in errors being printed? The latter seems preferable, and it wouldn't
> be a compatibility break because the user would have to run C-M-z to
> trigger such behavior.
Queuing input means blocking UI, so if we lock various parts of Emacs
while a command runs, we will have achieved nothing.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-07-27 19:32 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-07-26 19:07 A UI approach for making synchronous commands asynchronous Spencer Baugh
2023-07-27 5:58 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-07-27 14:22 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-07-27 15:09 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-07-27 15:32 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-07-27 17:31 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-07-27 18:22 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-07-27 19:32 ` Eli Zaretskii [this message]
2023-07-28 4:32 ` tomas
2023-07-28 6:21 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-08-01 14:09 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-08-01 16:53 ` Helmut Eller
2023-08-01 17:11 ` Eli Zaretskii
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