Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-pcd!hpcvca!charles
From: charles@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM (Charles Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: job control is a bug, not a feature
Message-ID: <5870009@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM>
Date: 12 Jun 89 17:47:47 GMT
References: <1989Jun7.224933.700@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Corvallis, Oregon
Lines: 30

>>> the best solution is to allow multiple windows, and job control within
>>> each...
>> Why provide two ways of doing the same thing?  See Ken Thompson in the
>> original Unix papers on the virtues of doing things only one way.
>>      Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
>What this all boils down to, I think, is that a window manager has to do
>all the things job control does, and some even allow programs written with
>no knowledge of the window manager's operation to run.  Job control on the
>other hand, is a subset of the window manager's functionality, so it must
>be either replaced (as I understand the normal scheme of things handles it)
>or the duplicate functions trip all over each other when you add a windowing
>scheme.
>	Charles Marslett

I have not seen a window manager which provides *suspend*.

I occasionally have large simulations which spend several days
running, during which time they spend lots of time swapping portions
to disk.  The task already is in the background.  I want to be able to
suspend it so it does not slow me down in my daytime tasks (by always
swapping my foreground tasks to disk be cause I stopped typing for a
second).  Then each evening before I leave I can restart the
simulation and let it swap away all it wants.

Windows do NOT replace job control.
--
	Charles Brown	charles@cv.hp.com or charles%hpcvca@hplabs.hp.com
			or hplabs!hpcvca!charles or "Hey you!"
	Not representing my employer.
	"The guy sure looks like plant food to me." Little Shop of Horrors