From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Spencer Baugh Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: A UI approach for making synchronous commands asynchronous Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2023 10:09:14 -0400 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="31820"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Cancel-Lock: sha1:bmhPr3dQq3KOJTyslFBSrQUIuSk= Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Tue Aug 01 17:34:39 2023 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1qQrOR-00083P-7u for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 01 Aug 2023 17:34:39 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1] helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1qQrNV-0004Bc-L7; Tue, 01 Aug 2023 11:33:42 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1qQq40-00083O-NM for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 01 Aug 2023 10:09:28 -0400 Original-Received: from ciao.gmane.io ([116.202.254.214]) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1qQq3z-0001AA-AH for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 01 Aug 2023 10:09:28 -0400 Original-Received: from list by ciao.gmane.io with local (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1qQq3v-0007SI-Ol for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 01 Aug 2023 16:09:23 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Received-SPF: pass client-ip=116.202.254.214; envelope-from=ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; helo=ciao.gmane.io X-Spam_score_int: -16 X-Spam_score: -1.7 X-Spam_bar: - X-Spam_report: (-1.7 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS=0.25, SPF_HELO_NONE=0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE=-0.01 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no X-Spam_action: no action X-Mailman-Approved-At: Tue, 01 Aug 2023 11:33:37 -0400 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:308236 Archived-At: Spencer Baugh writes: > Commands supporting this feature could start out with a blocking UI. > When such a command is run, Emacs just blocks and doesn't respond to > user input. The user can wait for as long as they like, and can > interrupt it with C-g. This is how things are today. > > The new feature is that if they get annoyed with how long a command is > taking, they can hit C-M-z to make the command "go into the background": > convert to some kind of non-blocking UI, like displaying a buffer with > progress or messaging when the task is done, as appropriate for the > individual command. vc operations in particular would benefit this approach is vc operations. In particular, see bug#21969 That bug happened after vc-diff was made async: now diffs would pop up a window which asynchronously would have the diff inserted into it. But a user complained that this was a worse user experience when the diff was both empty and fast to generate: in that case, simply synchronously running the diff and messaging "No diff" is nicer. So the command was made async, but then reverted to sync because of UI issues. So as I said elsewhere, in bug#21969 the asynchronous implementation *already* exists. What was missing was a good user experience for the asynchronous implementation. I think my "backgrounding" approach would be a perfect solution to this: start out blocking the UI waiting for the diff, but let the user hit a key to "background" it, to immediately create the window which will receive the diff asynchronously. That works great both in fast and slow diff-generation scenarios.