Some Questions about personal prefer

[richards at uiucdcsb.UUCP]

Re: Windows vs Job control

There are two reasons I wouldn't consider windows to be equivalent to job
control:

	1) If you have windows, and not job control, you have not the freedom
		to change your mind about forground/background once you have
		started.  You have committed yourself to using the resources
		required by a window (which in most cases is not insignificant
		e.g. bitmap memory, additional tty ports, perhaps a server
		process or shell for the window, display real estate), even if
		you don't intend to interact again with it, or do so only for
		an initial dialog.  Additional processes don't require the same
		resources as opening new windows. (At least in the window
		systems I'm familiar with.  I'm all for cheaper hardware,
		but it isn't *that* cheap yet.)

	2) Job control gives you the opportunity to make a running program
		"pause", so you can check intermediate results (particularly
		helpful if debugging).  Many a time I start jobs that work on
		big files in the background, then check up on them while they
		are in progress.  Sometimes the result looks questionable, so
		I "stop" the process and do more detailed investigating.  I
		appreciate the ability not to have to "kill" the job, then
		start it again if it really was working correctly.  Also, I
		can use the job control facilities to decide what background
		jobs I want to run concurrently, and modify that decision
		after the original instantiation, without losing work already
		accomplished.

I believe both have their place, and enjoy using systems that have the
flexibility to provide both.

Paul Richards	University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign
	UUCP:	{pur-ee,convex,inhp4}!uiucdcs!richards
	CSNET:	richards.uiuc at csnet-relay