Terminal operations.

[Robert W. Kerns <RWK@SCRC-YUKON.ARPA>]

    Date: Tue, 30 Jul 85 09:42 EDT
    From: greek@DEC-HUDSON

    In fact, Symbolics' use of the term "window" is grossly at odds with
    its use in the graphics literature, where a window is a (usually)
    rectangular region in the world coordinate system which is of interest
    to some function (e.g., one which displays it in a viewport on the screen).
    I hope we all agree that Common LISP should use the accepted terms
    when adding graphics to the language.  The terms we use for the
    "windowing" portion of the overall graphics facility must not conflict
    with the terms in the remainder of the graphics facility.  

The concept of windows does not come from the hard-core graphics
community, it comes out of the research into user-interfaces and
workstations.  I don't see why the graphics terminology should be
considered any more "accepted".  Certainly Symbolics did not invent
the term "window" as we use it.

							       This is one
    reason I wonder why there are two separate committees involved here.

Because the concept of managing your screen real-estate between
different processes and interactions has very little in common
with protocols for drawing pictures and repesenting graphics.
About the only thing they have in common is the use of the word
"window" and that they make good use of bit-map screens.

We do have to address issues like "what do we do with the word
window", but the solution isn't just to declare one usage
"non-standard".  Personally, I don't find it confusing to talk
about "A window running Lisp" vs "A window into a large diagram".
In some sense, they're the same thing, but are connected into
their respective universes differently.  I think we can come up
with a definition which will satisfy both camps.