Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!kramer
From: kramer@cs.toronto.edu ("Bryan M. Kramer")
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: real X windows support from emacs
Message-ID: <90May31.100818edt.14538@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Date: 31 May 90 14:09:29 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Lines: 37


Is there any movement towards an emacs that makes real use
of the capabilities of the X window system?  For example, certain
sunview textedit features would make editting much more efficient.
In general, these are features that have been known in various
editors, each of which makes editting more efficient:

a) scroll bars
b) hilighted selections (region between point and mark); secondary selections
c) copy or cut and paste holding down a key and using the mouse 
to outline the region to be copied/moved (in Interlisp it was
called shift-select). I personally like the openwindows style for selections.
d) search commands that use the current selection to move
e) use of multiple clicks to make smart selections --- in text mode
this would be word sentence paragraph; in lisp mode atom s-expr
f) draw the cursor between characters where it really is.
g) use graphics to draw marks as well.

h) use INDEPENT X windows for each window --> this means indepently shapable
and moveable; allow them to shrink to icons and in cases where they
display things such as direds or buffer menus, they would update themselves
when opened. Generally functions such as meta dot, dired, buffer list
should open new windows rather than change the contents of the current
window.


Personally, I think that h) would provide the biggest gain.
Of course, in implementing it, implementing scroll bars would be trivial.

Does such an editor exist for X?  I don't want to go back to
Interlisp.
-- 

 Bryan M. Kramer
 Department of Computer Science
 University of Toronto
 Toronto, ON