RE: When do you prefer frames instead of windows?

[Drew Adams]

> I have seen a lot of commentary about frames.  One thing that has
> been missing is the discussion of the window manager used to manage
> those frames.  It really isn't possible to talk about emacs and frame
> management without also involving the window manager.  "Ay, there's
> the rub."  And that is as personal of a choice as the choice of
> editor.  Focus follows mouse?  Click to focus?  Click to raise?
> Autoraise?  Tiling?  Single or multiple screens?  The combination of
> possibilities will create a large number of answers.  None of which
> is canonically correct.  All are correct for that individual.

Of course.  But Emacs does provide basic operations for manipulating
frames, and they work across platforms, and they already take into
account user choices (focus follows mouse etc.).

What is missing out of the box, IMO are:

* Better UI - commands and bindings, to do things that we
  currently do with windows.
* Better interaction between the rest of Emacs and frames.

The second one is harder to fix in one sense: doing so probably
will involve fixes across different platforms.

But the main obstacle, IMO, is that few people use frames a lot,
and with fewer users there is not the necessary consideration
of cross-functional behavior (e.g. how this or that feature
plays well with frames).  Emacs developers, like most Emacs users,
do not pay as much attention to the case of using frames instead
of windows.  Less attention when it comes to design and
implementation, and less attention when it comes to updates & bugs.

That's just the way it is, and it's normal: more attention
goes to what more people use more often.

> Personally I tend to use one frame for everything.  I sometimes use
> additional frames but only rarely.