From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Change terminology to better align =?utf-8?Q?users=E2=80=99?= experience with modern GUIs Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2019 09:00:03 -0400 Message-ID: References: <58E90D68-5CE4-425F-BB5F-07533665ADC0@icloud.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="207296"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jul 23 15:00:21 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1hpuOy-000rnr-Bm for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 23 Jul 2019 15:00:20 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:42250 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.86_2) (envelope-from ) id 1hpuOx-0007Y9-89 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 23 Jul 2019 09:00:19 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:50140) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.86_2) (envelope-from ) id 1hpuOt-0007Xd-Cw for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 23 Jul 2019 09:00:16 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hpuOs-0005tQ-7p for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 23 Jul 2019 09:00:15 -0400 Original-Received: from 195-159-176-226.customer.powertech.no ([195.159.176.226]:57450 helo=blaine.gmane.org) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hpuOs-0005qo-0t for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 23 Jul 2019 09:00:14 -0400 Original-Received: from list by blaine.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1hpuOo-000rdF-HX for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 23 Jul 2019 15:00:10 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Cancel-Lock: sha1:HN+gNsS73D9ta8JQfiUUCk4yDc0= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 195.159.176.226 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "help-gnu-emacs" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:121236 Archived-At: >> IMO in my ideal world, there should be no division between `window' and >> `buffer', the difference should be abstracted away so that users don’t >> have to know the `window' notion at all. > I don't see how that would even be possible. Indeed. A given window can show display different buffers at different times, and a buffer can be displayed in any number of buffers at any one time, so the two are really quite different. >> Changing the `window' term to `pane' or something else seems like >> a low-hanging fruit for people who would like to try using Emacs; I’m >> interested/curious on other people’s opinions about this. > This could be helpful, but there are a *lot* of function names using > 'window'. That means adding a lot of aliases for backwards > compatibility. Yes, we discussed doing such a change a few years back (renaming window to pane, and then renaming frame to window), but since those names appear as part of functions's and variables's names, it implies a massive renaming. In order not to break external packages and users's configs, the old names would still have to be preserved as aliases for many years (meaning that there would need to be many years between the renaming of windows to panes and the subsequent renaming of frames to windows). I think "many years" above can be estimated at about of 10 years (there are still several important packages which consider it important to be compatible with Emacs<23 and Emacs-23 was released 10 years ago). So the way I see it, we're talking about 20 years of transition. That makes "pane" rhyme with "pain". Stefan