Re: [Vimprobable-users] Editor patch, revised

[Markus D. <msd...@ar...>]

Hi Hannes,

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 05:48:34PM +0200, Hannes Schüller wrote:
> This is exactly the problem I've sketched in the conclusion post of the
> old thread: The symmetric spawn operation which I initially wrote is
> probably not suited for quite a number of editors which will return
> after the opening operation immediately. Hence my plan/suggestion to
> use an asymmetric operation and watch the file for changes through
> another process instead. Which, of course, would be much more complex
> to implement.
> 
> The major question for me here (which I think should be decided before
> any further coding) is whether we do need asymmetric operation or not.
> If not, we will need to document this in the wiki as well as possible
> which editors will work and which won't.

My opinion on this is that our most likely use cases are vim -gf or
an xterm -e <whatever>; both of them work fine, so I'd guess we're
way beyond 80/20 with what we have.

While I'd guess watching the file would be fairly easy after the
patches I just sent around (I suspect it would just be an additional
watch), it results in IMHO unresolvable functional trouble -- I think
we agree that only one "head" can edit the text at a time.  Thus, we
need to lock the browser text box while the editor "runs" and release
the lock when it exits.  By just looking at the temp file, we can't
tell when that happens, and if the editor itself detaches, we don't
know its pid either.

So, yes, I'd say what doesn't work (vim -g, urxvtc -- which is not
your average terminal emulator anyway --, what else?) on the wiki and
keep things more or less as they are.

Cheers, 

      Markus