Re: gnuplot vs. emacs' compile command

[Richard Stallman]

    gnuplot end of the problem should be fixed.  It remains somewhat
    worrying, though, that Emacs would be so irresponsive while waiting for
    the subprocess to end --- not that many newbies would have known to try
    Ctrl-G to break it out of its busy-looping state.

It is not so bad as all that.  Many things in Emacs can loop, and people
need to know about C-g.

That doesn't mean there is no room for improvement here.  Perhaps Emacs
should use a different criterion.  But I am not sure what it should be.
(Currently it waits for all writers to close the pipe, and then for
termination of the original process.)