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Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives


From: Richard M Stallman
Subject: Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:27:03 -0500

    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.  If you iconify a window, the application
continues working -- you just don't see what it displays.  For
instance, if you iconify a terminal, the processes running in it do
not stop.

    In particular, on a GUI the difference between a kill -STOP'ed emacs
    and one with no visible windows is hardly important to the user, who
    must do something unusual to resurrect it.

To de-iconify the Emacs frame just requires moving the mouse to the
icon, or to the tab in the bar at the bottom of the screen, and
clicking.  I don't think that is unusual.

      So the "withdraw frame"
    function (which happens to be called `suspend-frame') just keeps
    withdrawing frames, and when the last one is withdrawn, emacs goes to
    sleep.

It doesn't go to sleep.  If it was waiting for a command, it continues
waiting and there is no easy way for it to receive one.




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