rir3760 said:
While SciTE is being developed for both Linux and MS Windows I think
it has more to do with the jargon used in ancient times where GUI
front-ends didn't exist (or were just a novelty anyway), in that
time-frame people were used to work with 'buffers'
Aha, yeah, that was the feeling I was getting.
and IIRC the term is still used in gVim and XEmacs (but with a different
meaning).
I did a search for "windows buffers." Some hits for scite. And a great
many for vim and emacs families. In some cases, folks used the two words
in a loose interchangeable way, often writing this: "windows/buffers."
Then in a few other pages I glanced at, esp with emacs docs, I saw some
separating twists (although still closely intertwined).
<quote
http://www.dwam.net/docs/vim/windows.html>
A buffer is a file loaded into memory for editing. The original
file remains unchanged until you write the buffer to the file.
A buffer can be in one of three states.
Active-buffer. The buffer is displayed in a window. If there is a
file for this buffer, it has been read into the buffer. .
Inactive-buffer. The buffer is not displayed and does not contain
anything. Options for the buffer are remembered if the file was
once loaded.
Hidden-buffer: The buffer is not displayed. If there is a file for
this buffer, it has been read into the buffer. The buffer may have
been modified.
</quote>
The above Vim excerpt was fine. The next one below, Emacs, it got a little
weird for me. But that was less to do with buffers and more to do with the
strangeness about "visiting a file."
<quote
http://www.cs.rit.edu/~cs1/Labs/Tips/emacs-w2.html>
Buffer
The text that you are editing is contained in an object called a
buffer. Emacs is "visiting" a file when the file data has been
loaded into a buffer in the editor. There can be many buffers
visiting different files at one time. Two buffers can view the
same file in different locations in the file. A buffer may not
always be visible. Some buffers may be hidden at any particular
point in time. The buffer that has the text cursor in it is the
current buffer. The editing you perform from the keyboard will
always affect the current buffer. At any given moment there can
be many buffers visiting many different files. Only a few of them
may be visible on the display at any particular point in time.
Window
A window displays part of a buffer visiting a file. When Emacs
starts up it displays one single general-purpose window inside a
single frame. If you specified a file name on the command line
when emacs was started emacs initially displays the buffer that is
visiting the file. A window can be split vertically and
horizontally. When the window is split both of the newly created
windows will display the same position in the buffer that was
being viewed before the split. These two views into the buffer
are now independent.
</quote>
Then here I got totally lost:
<quote
http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2002-02/msg00094.html>
also, a frame (an m$windows window) is what contains emacs windows
(these look like window panes) and any emacs buffer can be
displayed in any emacs window (pane). also killing an emacs
buffer doesn't touch the file which was copied into that buffer.
emacs deals with frames, windows, buffers, and files separately so
that you have a bit more control over things if you want. cheers.
</quote>
At least that complexity was for emacs, where, as you said, there is a
somewhat different meaning for buffers.
Hey, that's the important touch.
And if Scite wants call things buffers, that's good to me. Just so long
as it doesn't wander way out in the left park, and tell me to wait while
it "visits a file."
