Re: making already started shell-commands (ESC !) asynchronous

[Eli Zaretskii]

On 3 May 2001, Dan Jacobson wrote:

> Currently I can kill the command with C-g, so at least emacs is
> monitoring that key.

Emacs sets up for C-g to generate an interrupt on most platforms, so it 
doesn't need to monitor that key.

> Well, how about monitoring other keys like C-h,
> which could print out a list of things one can do while waiting for a
> synchronous command to finish, including what key to press to turn it
> into an asynchronous command.  To test do ESC ! sleep 2222 and note that
> only C-g can do anything, and that one thing it can do is kill the
> process... Gee, how inflexible, either sacrifice a halfway done 'big
> job' or give up access to all the things you were doing in emacs until
> it finishes... I mean the shell can do it, how about emacs?

What do you mean exactly by ``shell can do it''?  How do you do that from 
a shell?

> By the way, ! on a .pdf file in dired has one guess: acroread.  How
> about at least adding xpdf, gv... and rank appropriately.

The next release uses xpdf instead of acroread.