Re: frame-local variables weirdness

[Richard Stallman]

    Maybe it is something better achieved by terminal-local variables.
    Those were not available at that time.  Just a guess.

Terminal-local variables were introduced in 1995,
before frame-local variables.

    > I would expect there was some
    > discussion at the time about reasons to add the feature.  Can someone find
    > that discussion and see what the motive was?

    That was over nine and a half years ago. The list archives of that
    time are not public, so it's a task for someone who was there at that
    moment.

I found the discussion.  I see that someone asked for a feature to
display frame-specific data in the mode line, and I decided this
general feature (with which the job could be done) was cleaner and
simpler than a specific feature which could do only that one job.

Since it isn't very useful, we can take it out if we cannot fix it.
But first let's try to fix it.