Re: Infrastructural complexity.

[Chong Yidong]

> To me, Emacs frames are an existing abstraction that is already very
> close to how each individual panel, tearoff, and pop-up works...  One
> example is if you look at Eclipse screen shots and the panel down the
> left side - sometimes it is split vertically; sometimes the user gets
> to add additional vertical splits.  That panel is, to my mind, a frame
> -- just with this slight "subordination" addition and perhaps a
> restriction about which buffers can be displayed there.

The proofs of concept written by Joakim and Martin already handle this
behavior.  They don't require much of a change to the usual window
semantics, either; the only new rule is that window operations only
effect the windows within the current window group (e.g., C-x 1 would
not delete the windows in other groups).

The only thing new that the "framelets" idea brings to the table is the
possibility of a separate set of tool-bars.  But I don't think it's a
big advantage considering (i) the extra engineering that would be
required to get these extra toolbars to work, and (ii) the fact that
Emacs is mostly keyboard-driven anyway.