Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!primerd!teapot!milgr From: milgr@teapot.prime.COM (Marc Milgram) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: "Suspending a program running in an X window is silly" Message-ID: <723@primerd.PRIME.COM> Date: 2 Jul 90 14:43:42 GMT References: <96AW02Cm01gU01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> Sender: news@primerd.PRIME.COM Reply-To: milgr@teapot.prime.COM (Marc Milgram) Distribution: comp Lines: 57 In article <96AW02Cm01gU01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>, kpc00@ccc.amdahl.com (Kimball P Collins) writes: |>This reminds me. Does anybody else think that the version of ^Z that |>gets compiled on machines without job control (the inferior shell that |>uses the original terminal) is better than the version that gets |>compiled on machines with job control (the superior shell)? |> I do, except when it is an X window, it should iconify instead of suspending. |>What is the advantage of the superior shell other than that one's |>.cshrc/$ENV file is not read and that non-exported items are |>available? One of the advantages of the inferior shell is that one |>starts out in the working directory of the current buffer, rather than |>the wd at the time that one called emacs. |> My .cshrc file is read when I invoke a new csh (or tcsh), unless I provide some flag (which emacs does not). Two advantages to a superior shell: ^Z does what most other programs do on a BSD system (they suspend). Secondly, on such a system, you can start multiple jobs from one shell, and switch between them. About 4 years ago, I worked on a VAX running BSD 4.[23], with not enough memory, and too many users. When I logged in I would start up emacs (took about a minute). When I wanted to use some other screen oriented program (such as talk(1) or rogue(6), I would suspend emacs and enter the program. When I was taking an AI course, (before I discovered how nicely Lisp runs from emacs) I flipped back and forth between emacs and Lisp. Lisp also took forever to initially start. |>And, tangentially, has anybody else noticed that M-x shell is useless |>with ksh because of its raw-mode features? Are there hints on this? |> I don't use ksh. why not try bash, or fix ksh. |>(P.S. I quickly tell the difference between an inferior shell and the |>superior shell because I have my prompts change for each invocation of |>a subshell. This helps to remind me that I am inside emacs and is an |>advantage of the inferior shell, along with knowing that I have a new, |>unadulterated shell.) I needed to do some hacking to do this. After all, my .cshrc is read every time I reenter a csh. I had some global which was set to the depth of the shell. |> |>-- |> |>Not representing Amdahl nor necessarily myself. Marc Milgram My opinions are my own milgr@teapot.prime.com