Re: gnome-terminal idea

[Tim Moore <tmoore tembel org>]

On Wed, 23 Sep 1998, David Jeske wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 23, 1998 at 05:18:14PM -0400, Tim Moore wrote:
> > > however if you've ever used screen you'll know how much that kind of 
> > > "mdi" style is supperior in terms of "speed" of use to overlaping xterms
> > 
> > If I've ever used screen? Is screen a program?
> 
> "screen" is a program which manages multiple text sessions over a
> single outgoing session. You telnet in, run "screen" and then you can
> create and destroy session, and switch between them with a key
> combination. The best feature of it is that you can 'disconnect' from
> a screen session without closing it, and 'reconnect' to it on another
> telnet session. Meanwhile all your programs have continued to run. 

Argh. Ignore my last message about disconnecting/connecting. I didn't
understand this. Screen seems really cool. I'm surprised I haven't heard
of it before.

> I use screen 100% of the time. I'm currently writing this email in
> text-mode xemacs under Mutt under Screen over a telnet session. If my
> net connection was flaky and dropped me in the middle of a sentence, I
> could telnet back in an 'reconnect' and I would be exactly where I was
> before.

Hmm.  I should start doing this...I'm kind of curious as to how this
works, now. I guess I should get the source. Perhaps it would be possible
to write an analogue for X sessions.

> I don't use screen to 'switch'
> between multiple sessions, I almost always use multiple windows for
> that.

OK. But it's clear that that's a matter of personal preference.

> I only use screen because it gives me the ability to resume a
> session if the telnet connection gets dropped. My 'ultimate' usage for
> screen would be for every login session to connect to one persistant
> 'screen session' and create a new window. Then, I would like to be
> able to telnet in from a different location and 'take over' any of
> those windows, and switch between them. However, because a window
> within a screen session can't be viewed from multiple-locations at the
> same time, screen dosn't do this very well.

So are you saying that you have to log out of a screen session before you
can reconnect to it? I.E., if I leave a session running on my work machine
when I leave, I can't reconnect to it from home?

> I expect I would use the 'MDI' interface the same exact way. Namely, I
> would always create new windows, and I would move them to the desktop
> I wanted them in. In fact, the biggest use of a notebook I can see
> would be if I could setup task oritented layouts of windows, with the
> same windows layed out differently. For example "edit", "compile" and
> "debug" virtual desktops, where the debug desktop has the debugger
> interface, the compile desktop has the compile/compile error
> interface, and the edit desktop has the project view. In this case,
> the 'editor' shows up in all the desktops, but perhaps not the same
> size.

So you want to put the same tab into multiple windows, right?

> This can be done with window managers today (mostly), and dosn't
> require us to rewrite all the apps to handle some Gnome noteboook MDI
> interface.

I must misunderstand. How can you put the same window into multiple
desktops? Other than using a sticky tag or something, which doesn't do
exactly what you want.

> Interestingly enough, emacs and Xemacs do all of this for emacs
> buffers today.
> 

True. I can make as many frames as I want, and as many (emacs) windows as
I want within each frame. I can switch between buffers in a window or
a frame, switch between windows in a frame, and switch between frames. 
I can even make a single buffer appear in multiple windows or frames.
Perhaps the is the ideal we should strive for.

Tim