Re: Suggested change in net/browse-url.el

[David Kastrup]

address@hidden (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >     Since I use 0 here, the output of calling the process is discarded
> >     and Emacs does _not_ wait.
> > 
> > You're right.  Sorry for not noticing that.
> > 
> >     In fact, this way of using call-process is the _only_ way to start a
> >     process in the background without getting an associated process object
> >     within Emacs.  It is a bit confusing that the API for starting a
> >     particularly asynchronous kind of process is hidden in the function
> >     used normally for starting synchronous processes,
> > 
> > Good point.  We could add a new function for this: fork-process.  What
> > do people think of that?
> 
> It would be ok to add it (e.g. in subr.el), but fork-process would
> be a mis-leading name for it IMO -- fork means that you get two
> identical processes (i.e.  two emacs processes running).
> 
> I think call-process-nowait would be better (we already have an
> analogy with open-network-stream-nowait).  It would simply be a
> macro which calls call-process with 0 BUFFER argument -- but with a
> specific doc string.

That sounds like a reasonably good way to make that functionality
more visible.

Maybe we would also need other system calls for more functionality:
the lack of job control (putting a program into background after
having started it in the foreground) in eshell might point to that.

But the addition under this name and functionality is nothing that
would declare a can of worms like that open.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum