Re: Post-22.1 development?

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>       These two variables would normally be
>     > frame-local, and in each frame, they would have the right values for
>     > that frame's terminal.
>
>     I'd make them terminal-local.
>
> Either one.
>
>     The problem I see with this is that Károly expressed a strong
>     preference for having the _complete_ environment terminal-local
>     (personally, I think this a bad idea but have not been able to
>     convince him and several others): he preferred to consider a
>     separately started emacsclient session to have an _independent_
>     complete set of environment variables.
>
> If we want that, it can be a separate and independent feature.
> There is no need to combine that question with this one.
> It is clear that TERM and DISPLAY should go with the terminal
> regardless of use of emacsclient.
>
>     Using the above scheme with terminal-process-environment would still
>     facilitate that, but in that case most of the direct manipulations and
>     queries working on process-environment would fail to work.
>
> `terminal-process-environment' is cumbersome.  I'd rather have
> `term-environment-variable' and `display-environment-variable',
> as I explained.
>
> This may require rewriting various Lisp programs -- but it brings a
> benefit in clarity that can justify an incompatible change.

I think it would be confusing if setenv and most particularly getenv
did not work for TERM and DISPLAY variables, and I see no particular
benefit to letting them stop to work mostly as previously.  If
setenv/getenv are to remain the preferred accessors, it seems
reasonable to gather the terminal-local variables in a single list in
order not to have to special-case every variable.

-- 
David Kastrup