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Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives
From: |
Stephen J. Turnbull |
Subject: |
Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives |
Date: |
Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:31:54 +0900 |
Richard M Stallman writes:
> I used to agree with you, but The Kids These Days (ie, those who have
> grown up with WIMPy interfaces) think of a window as a (foreground)
> process. If the window goes away, the process stops.
>
> But that is generally false. For instance, if you iconify a
> terminal, the processes running in it do not stop.
Sure. But that's machine-centric thinking. Here, we're discussing
the user interface. From the user's point of view, the *user
interaction process* stops, and that is generally all the user cares
about when suspending a process: "Get out of my face so I can do
something else I want to do!!!" If the process wants to do some
background work, how often would the user object?
I don't care what the interface is called. But my feeling is that the
primary UI operation here is "withdrawing a frame", and that whether
the process gets STOPed or not is an implementation detail. For
example, in a terminal-based emacs you could (in theory) do
M-x long-running-process RET
C-z
bg %emacs
# do other work
fg %emacs
to the same effect as iconifying a GUI window. In fact, a little
magic with keyboard macros and timers or subprocesses could presumably
allow us to write `execute-key-sequence-and-background-emacs', which
GUI-habituated users might prefer to bind to C-z for use in a
terminal-based environment. (Don't take that entirely seriously, I
haven't thought it through.)
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, (continued)
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Eli Zaretskii, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Dan Nicolaescu, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Eli Zaretskii, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Dan Nicolaescu, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Eli Zaretskii, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Dan Nicolaescu, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Richard M Stallman, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Stefan Monnier, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Eli Zaretskii, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Richard M Stallman, 2008/12/30
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives,
Stephen J. Turnbull <=
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Stefan Monnier, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Stephen J. Turnbull, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Chong Yidong, 2008/12/31
- Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Stephen J. Turnbull, 2008/12/31
Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives, Richard M Stallman, 2008/12/28