Re: Terminology in multi-tty primitives

[Stefan Monnier]

>> I think calls to make-frame-on-tty should be replaceable by just
>> 
>> (make-frame `((tty . ,tty) (tty-type . ,type) . ,parameters))))
>> 
>> I.e. the explicit `tty' parameter should be interpreted by make-frame as
>> overriding the window-system of the current frame.

> I won't object to such a change, but I must say I don't see how that
> would be more elegant than the current code in make-frame-on-tty.
> Perhaps even less elegant: make-frame-on-tty is a user command, so it
> can sustain more ugliness, if user-level considerations justify that.
> By contrast, make-frame is a general-purpose infrastructure, and
> introducing such conditions into it makes it less general.

I kind of agree.

- the user-level command make-frame-on-tty doesn't seem very useful and
  I'd be happy to remove it.

- if we remove it, then we have to replace the only call to it from
  Elisp, which is of course in server.el.
  I guess server.el can't be used under MS-DOS, so the test you added
  wouldn't be needed there anyway, so server.el could just as well use
  (make-frame `((window-system) (tty . ,tty) (tty-type . ,type) . ,parameters))
  so the uglyness is not really crucial in make-frame.

- still, when make-frame is called with an explicit `tty' argument but
  without an explicit `window-system' argument, the right thing to do is
  to give precedence to the `tty' and choose an appropriate
  window-system for it.
 

        Stefan