Re: Emacs Lisp and Guile

[Simon Josefsson]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     This assumes that only one thread is running at a time.  It wouldn't
>     work for a machine with multiple CPUs where threads can run at the
>     same time and the concept of a "thread switch" does not exist.  Maybe
>     we don't want to care about this, which I would be very happy with.
>
> It is useful for Guile to support real parallel execution of threads,
> but it is not important for Emacs.  Having multiple threads in Emacs
> will be very useful, but it is perfectly adequate if only one thread
> can run at a time.

I beg to differ -- one fundamental design principle in GUI design is
that the user interface should never "hang" due to processing in the
application.  The user should be able to see e.g. the toolbar and the
buttons and tooltips etc should be updated even when Emacs is
processing something.  Ideally long standing operations should have a
"Stop" button in the toolbar that aborts the operation.

Perhaps this isn't in direct conflict with your statement though, if
the thread switching is fast enough so that users doesn't notice it.