Re: launch a program in an arbitrary frame

[Hikaru Ichijyo <ichijyo@macross.sdf.jp>]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> Hikaru Ichijyo <ichijyo@macross.sdf.jp> writes:
>
>> The AJAX sites like Facebook still need a thick
>> browser like Firefox. I ran into a message thread in
>> another forum where people were talking about
>> integrating full WebKit suite capabilities into an
>> Emacs browser, but Stallman was against it.
>>
>> To which, I say...GOOD!!! I'm glad the voice of
>> reason (ok, the voice of RMS) is prevailing here!
>> The last thing Emacs needs is for the twenty ton
>> bloat that now affects thick web browsers to come
>> like a snake into paradise and afflict us all.
>
> 1) Of course, I don't like Ajax and absolutely not
>    Facebook, however adding support for things one
>    doesn't like will have the effect of not alienating
>    people who do like those things. If we go the extra
>    mile they (perhaps) won't be instantly turned
>    off/afraid, and in time and gradually they will be
>    exposed to different things through the back door,
>    and in even more time perhaps that will make them
>    drop the Facebook etc. hysteria and become
>    independent computer users.
[...]

Well, it'd be nice to be able to display AJAX pages in some way...but I
don't think linking against the same twenty-ton WebKit suite or Mozilla
libraries that the big browsers are using is the way to do it.  In doing
that, we get their memory footprint, and their security problems.

If we could have something clean, secure, and light that'd be great.  I
mostly just want to be able to see the textual information, plus a few
embedded pictures -- kind of like Emacs-W3C.  It'd be nice if it could
be accomplished without twenty meg of tarballed code, written in some
language with buffer overflow problems like C++.

>> Say you have three buffers setup with a window
>> layout you like. You launch Gnus. It brings up its
>> Group buffer, and so far, you're fine. Then you read
>> an article, and the whole frame is replaced with
>> Gnus' Group/Article split -- so much for your window
>> layout. It's the Group/Article split that seems to
>> make Gnus incompatible with any kind of window
>> layout you might be using, so I've just been putting
>> anything that I care about the layout of in
>> a separate frame. The Gnus Help and Server buffers
>> haven't been doing anything bad to me -- they're
>> just simple single-window screens.
>
> To me it sounds like it is the same problem and
> because of that applying the same solution with
> different data is a good first step.
>
> But, to be exact, you display articles from the
> summary buffer. Say you have a list of articles.
> You hit RET. What do you want to happen then, exactly?
> And what do you want not happening, that is?

It's not what happens when I'm actually using Gnus that's the problem
really.  When I'm looking a Summary buffer list of articles, I hit RET
on one, and it splits the frame into roughly 1/5th / 4/5ths, and
displays the article in the bottom part.  That's great.

But now let's say I'm done using Gnus, and I want to go back to the
three buffers I had all laid out the way I wanted before I ran Gnus.  My
window layout is gone.  I can bring up the buffers again, but I'd have
to recreate the splits.

I tried using Winner mode, but it seems it doesn't know how to recall
the window layout either (even though this sort of thing is supposed to
be what Winner mode is for).  I've just resorted to using frames any
time I have window splits I don't want Gnus to be able to mess with.

-- 
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent
that will reach to himself.
					--Thomas Paine