Re: C-x 2 and C-x 3

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

John Yates writes:

 > Does anyone else find the term 'split' jarring?

No.

 > Many GUI apps have 'splitters' (e.g. Excel).  If Emacs' primitives
 > really did perform a classic split then the resulting windows would
 > show more or less the contents that was on the screen prior to
 > performing the split.

This might indeed be preferable.

 > But that is not what happens.  Emacs' splits really duplicate
 > windows.

No, they don't.  Both new windows are different from the original in
an important way: they're smaller.  They happen to start out
displaying the same content (but once again, the content displayed is
different from the original window's in almost all cases -- which you
can extend to all cases if you're a Pythonista and like significant
whitespace).

And this artifact is useless, as Alan Mackenzie points out.
Similarly, a spreadsheet split is useless until you scroll it, at
which point it is no longer a split of the original content.  The
point is the division of a rectangular framing element into two
adjoined rectangular framing elements.  If that's not a split, you owe
me my banana back.

I really don't get this focus on an implementation detail of the
displayed content of the window, a detail that is almost invariably
voided instantaneously.