Guide to using Acme effectively?
Aaron W. Hsu
I am taking the Acme workflow for a spin. I am coming from Emacs and Vi. I
have read the manual and the original paper discussing the motivations
behind its design. I am familiar with mouse based editing in the NEdit
style to ane extent that I can use it properly with NEdit, but I am having
trouble understanding just how the workflows of Acme work with real world
type questions. Is there anything out there that would help me connect
some of the tasks I often wish to do with the efficient Acme approach? I'm
missing small things, like how to select and move all the text in one
window to another in a fast manner, but I'm also missing big things like
how to quickly navigate through to specific parts of a file and how to
reduce redundancy of typing and movement.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Aaron W. Hsu
--
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. -- C. S. Lewis
erik quanstrom
> missing small things, like how to select and move all the text in one
> window to another in a fast manner,
there are a couple of options "Edit ," will select all the text in
a window. but "|cat $file" will replace the dot with the contents
of $file. i'm not sure that this is either non-obvious or helpful.
that's not something i do with acme.
> but I'm also missing big things like
> how to quickly navigate through to specific parts of a file and how to
> reduce redundancy of typing and movement.
i'm not sure what kind of text file you're talking about.
i generally put unique text for each of the sections i'm
currently intereted in in the tag.
- erik
jo...@csplan9.rit.edu
> how to quickly navigate through to specific parts of a file and how to
> reduce redundancy of typing and movement.
>
Here's how I navigate through my various files in acme:
The old standard, the arrow keys. Type ":100" in the tag and
left-click to go to line 100. Mid-click and hold on the scrollbar to
scroll efficiently. Type text in the tag and left-click to search.
If you're going to complain about redundancy of movement regarding the
hand to the keyboard, acme might not be for you. I think Tog's
conclusions (the single set of studies put forth whenever this thing
comes up) are poorly made and that there is a lot to be said for
efficient keyboard use, but acme really works quite nicely for me--I
don't feel that I'm wasting time mousing around, for the most part.
Just give it a shot. There's no magical trick to using acme quickly
and effectively; just like any editor, you'll have to get used to it
and figure out how you want to use it.
John
Charles Forsyth
it turns out that there is rather older work that supports
much the same conclusion, which i probably saw mentioned in HCI Remixed,
since that's one i've read recently.
J. R. Mauro
On Jul 1, 2009, at 11:58, jo...@csplan9.rit.edu wrote:
>> [...] but I'm also missing big things like
>> how to quickly navigate through to specific parts of a file and how
>> to
>> reduce redundancy of typing and movement.
>>
>
> Here's how I navigate through my various files in acme:
>
> The old standard, the arrow keys. Type ":100" in the tag and
> left-click to go to line 100. Mid-click and hold on the scrollbar to
> scroll efficiently. Type text in the tag and left-click to search.
There's also the End key.
J. R. Mauro
I've seen a couple of independent time trials from the mid 80s that
supported the same conclusion.
blst...@bellsouth.net
I won't dispute the conclusions on the time criteria.
I'm just not sure time is the right thing to measure.
I spend relatively little of my time actually typing
or moving the cursor, etc. The majority of my time
is spent thinking, so I'm much more interested in
what distracts me less and what causes the least
irritation. And I do find moving my hand back and
forth between the keyboard and mouse to be a
bit irritating. I will say, however, that I find acme
to be the least irritating of the pointer-based
applications I've used.
BLS
Kris Maglione
>> it turns out that there is rather older work that supports
>> much the same conclusion, which i probably saw mentioned in HCI
>> Remixed,
>> since that's one i've read recently.
>
> supported the same conclusion.
References would be nice, but I think it would be fair to say
that both mouse- and keyboard-based user interfaces have evolved
(or perhaps devolved) since the '80s. It's also fair to say that
most interfaces these use a fairly heavy combination of the
keyboard and mouse (especially those interfaces used by
professionals, including CAD, music composition, and graphic
design). But, even if we do, in fact, have well designed studies
that suggest some optimal mix of keyboard and mouse interaction
in the general case, I suspect that they won't say much about the
specific case of acme.
(end long-winded rant)
--
Kris Maglione
Perhaps when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my
own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a
simpler one is at hand.
--"Sherlock Holmes"
erik quanstrom
> or moving the cursor, etc. The majority of my time
> is spent thinking, so I'm much more interested in
> what distracts me less and what causes the least
> irritation. And I do find moving my hand back and
> forth between the keyboard and mouse to be a
> bit irritating. I will say, however, that I find acme
> to be the least irritating of the pointer-based
> applications I've used.
perhaps i should have taken piano, but i find the
contortions kbd-based editors such as vi or emacs
require to be quite irritating indeed. fumbling for
the esc key takes ones left hand out of position
as much as grabbing the mouse does for the right
hand.
i've enjoyed using ibm's trackpoint, but i've got
two thumbs and acme needs three buttons.
clearly there's room for improvement in input
devices.
- erik
Russ Cox
I'm very happy with acme's use of the mouse, but
acme's power comes from the rest of its design.
Russ
blst...@bellsouth.net
That's an interesting observation. As it turns out I
do play, and it's certainly possible that it colors my
taste in UIs.
> contortions kbd-based editors such as vi or emacs
> require to be quite irritating indeed. fumbling for
I don't disagree with you there.
> the esc key takes ones left hand out of position
I'm less sensitive to esc, probably because I used teco
heavily in college. Of course, the fact that esc is in
the wrong place on current keyboards doesn't help
any.
> i've enjoyed using ibm's trackpoint, but i've got
> two thumbs and acme needs three buttons.
> clearly there's room for improvement in input
> devices.
Agreed on both points.
BLS
blst...@bellsouth.net
> I'm very happy with acme's use of the mouse, but
> acme's power comes from the rest of its design.
I think that's why I find acme's use of the pointer to
be more paletable than other apps. The one thing
that no UI study ever measures is how much using
an app gives one a feeling of connection to the intelligence
behind it. And a good design helps build that connection.
I've never really felt that with any commercial software
that I can recall. But I do feel it with most parts of Plan 9.
For me, that's the single most important factor in how
plesant a piece of software is to use.
BLS
Jason Catena
acme-like program.
http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/idioms.html
wily is a unix port of just acme which rarely gets updated. It has a
few differences, mostly in the direction of being more unixy. I used
it for 5 years before switching wholly over to plan9port. Probably
its greatest advantage to me now is that it's small and compiles easy
to any platform I've tried: Linux, Solaris, even Cygwin. So I tend to
load it on machines I will be on only briefly, to avoid having to use
vi or emacs.
Jason Catena
Noah Evans
erik quanstrom
wily is a reimplementation of acme from the papers; wily
is to acme as byron's rc is to rc.
- erik
erik quanstrom
> It's not how you say something, it's what you say.
you must be a bachelor. ☺
- erik
David Leimbach
Ethan Grammatikidis
blst...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > perhaps i should have taken piano, but i find the
>
> That's an interesting observation. As it turns out I
> do play, and it's certainly possible that it colors my
> taste in UIs.
>
> > contortions kbd-based editors such as vi or emacs
> > require to be quite irritating indeed. fumbling for
>
> I don't disagree with you there.
Me either, I like vi better than emacs simply because it
requires fingertwisting much more rarely.
>
> > the esc key takes ones left hand out of position
>
> I'm less sensitive to esc, probably because I used teco
> heavily in college. Of course, the fact that esc is in
> the wrong place on current keyboards doesn't help
> any.
I wish I'd kept the original IBM PC (Not AT) keyboard I
had. Esc was at the left of 1, and the numeric pad
wasn't stupidly far off to the right. Linux has a
driver for PC keyboards too.
>
> > i've enjoyed using ibm's trackpoint, but i've got
> > two thumbs and acme needs three buttons.
> > clearly there's room for improvement in input
> > devices.
>
> Agreed on both points.
>
> BLS
>
>
--
Ethan Grammatikidis
Those who are slower at parsing information must
necessarily be faster at problem-solving.
John Floren
I have a weird love-hate relationship with keybindings in Emacs. That
is, I wish they were slightly more Unix-ized instead of whatever
arbitrary junk they decided on back in the ITS days. Ctrl-U should
delete from your cursor to the start of the line, and Ctrl-H should do
a backspace, not open Help! The ^H problem is especially annoying on
my Slackware box, where I apparently can't hit the Backspace key in
console-mode Emacs or else I'll open the help window. Still, emacs
makes for a decent dev environment (it's where I write most of my Unix
code) and if I ever got motivated enough, it's nice that it has a
fully-featured Lisp environment for extending stuff.
John
--
"I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS
reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C,
Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba
yy
> how to
> quickly navigate through to specific parts of a file and how to reduce
> redundancy of typing and movement.
>
Maybe I'm alone doing this, but I tend to avoid movement inside a file
abusing of the Zerox command. I keep the function definitions at the
top of the file and to go to a function I Zerox that window and then
go to there with the right button. I also Zerox windows to do small
tasks, like fixing a typo, for example.
To reduce typing I use mouse chords (and Snarf in the tag, when more
convenient), some Edit commands and a bit too much |awk.
I think a guide of using Acme effectively would be different for every
user, just give it some time, and you will create your own habits.
hth,
--
- yiyus || JGL .
Ethan Grammatikidis
David Leimbach <lei...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Russ Cox <r...@swtch.com> wrote:
>
> > Arguing about mouse vs keyboard misses the point.
> > I'm very happy with acme's use of the mouse, but
> > acme's power comes from the rest of its design.
> >
> > Russ
> >
> >
> Even in Emacs, I use the mouse because pointing the insertion point or
> cursor or whatever to where I need to type next is *much* faster than many
> repetitions of a keypress a lot of the time.
Me too, I require vi with X or Xterm mouse support. :) The mouse is not faster than vi's beginning/end of paragraph operations though, nor being able to set or goto "marks" with just 2 keypresses. Then there's "find matching bracket" which can be invaluable depending on language, goto beginning/end of sentence which is great when you've just typed something really stupid in your human-language narrative. There's the vi way of facilitating deletion or changing text in a region defined by any cursor motion, that can be hugely faster than select+delete with the mouse.
I'm not saying vi is brilliant. Apart from the features listed above it has many which require more effort to recall than they're worth. It's idea of requiring the cursor to be on a character is obstructive, as are some of the features designed around that.
erik quanstrom
> I can't remember using Esc anywhere,
esc selects typing since last non-typing
repositing of the tick or deletes selected
text in acme. esc toggles hold mode in
a 9term window.
- erik
John Floren
> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009 15:00:01 -0500
> blst...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
>> > perhaps i should have taken piano, but i find the
>>
>> That's an interesting observation. As it turns out I
>> do play, and it's certainly possible that it colors my
>> taste in UIs.
>>
>> > contortions kbd-based editors such as vi or emacs
>> > require to be quite irritating indeed. fumbling for
>>
>> I don't disagree with you there.
>
> Me either, I like vi better than emacs simply because it
> requires fingertwisting much more rarely.
>
Not when Esc is placed waaaay up in the upper left... Of course, in
Linux you can rebind the keyboard however you want, and X.org even has
a nifty 'Option "ctrl:swapcaps"' thing to stick in xorg.conf for us
Emacs users.
If only Emacs wasn't tainted with the dirty dirty smell of RMS... I
guess there's always Xemacs, which has had a long time to shower off
the Stallman.
Umm, Plan 9 relevance: I don't have to fingertwist in Plan 9! Actually
I can't remember using Esc anywhere, and of course the F[1-12] keys
are unused, and a proper terminal boots with the Control key to the
left of the 'a', so I've got no complaints.
Charles Forsyth
it wasn't just time, but included other aspects such as accuracy.
``but i want to be slow AND, overall, inaccurate!''
Dan Cross
> Not when Esc is placed waaaay up in the upper left... Of course, in
> Linux you can rebind the keyboard however you want, and X.org even has
> a nifty 'Option "ctrl:swapcaps"' thing to stick in xorg.conf for us
> Emacs users.
Some of this is a keyboard issue: I use a "Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite
2" for my Unix machine (really, a glorified terminal disguised as a
Macintosh) and I'm quite happy with it. Escape and control in the
right places, a small form factor, etc. On my plan9 terminal, I use
the "real" HHKB; it gets the job done, but is no longer generally
available.
Felipe Bichued
John Floren
*That's* where I'd been using it, I thought for some reason I was
oversimplifying when I said I hadn't used Esc. Didn't know about the
first trick, but I do use hold mode... usually after I have typed a
few lines and want to edit them.
Ethan Grammatikidis
John Floren <slawm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Ethan Grammatikidis<eek...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> > On Wed, 1 Jul 2009 15:00:01 -0500
> > blst...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> >
> >> > perhaps i should have taken piano, but i find the
> >>
> >> That's an interesting observation. As it turns out I
> >> do play, and it's certainly possible that it colors my
> >> taste in UIs.
> >>
> >> > contortions kbd-based editors such as vi or emacs
> >> > require to be quite irritating indeed. fumbling for
> >>
> >> I don't disagree with you there.
> >
> > Me either, I like vi better than emacs simply because it
> > requires fingertwisting much more rarely.
> >
>
> Not when Esc is placed waaaay up in the upper left... Of course, in
> Linux you can rebind the keyboard however you want, and X.org even has
> a nifty 'Option "ctrl:swapcaps"' thing to stick in xorg.conf for us
> Emacs users.
>
> If only Emacs wasn't tainted with the dirty dirty smell of RMS... I
> guess there's always Xemacs, which has had a long time to shower off
> the Stallman.
There are a lot of dirty smells in the software world these days. :/ At least RMS hasn't grown fat on BSD code & tried to pass it off as his own copyright patent work.
>
> Umm, Plan 9 relevance: I don't have to fingertwist in Plan 9! Actually
> I can't remember using Esc anywhere, and of course the F[1-12] keys
> are unused, and a proper terminal boots with the Control key to the
> left of the 'a', so I've got no complaints.
I find mouse chording quite 'twisting'. :/
>
> John
> --
> "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS
> reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C,
> Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba
>
roger peppe
> small things, like how to select and move all the text in one window to
> another in a fast manner
if the amount of text in the window is relatively small, then
just selecting all the text by dragging from start to end
and chord cut/paste is usually fastest.
when there's lots of text, it can be better to
select all the text by typing ":," in the tag and
right-clicking it; then middle click "Snarf" to
copy it to the snarf buffer.
there's a gotcha about using Snarf, which is that
there's actually a concealed "currently selected window"
in acme, and it's not always easy to know which it is...
i haven't found a straightforward way of explaining yet either.
(i think it's possibly the biggest UI flaw in acme. some visual
indication could rectify the problem, i think)
selecting text (with the left mouse button) changes
the currently selected window (which isn't always the body;
it can be the tag)
so if you select the ":," text before clicking Snarf,
you'll end up snarfing the ":," text itself, not
the selection in the body of the window!
you can get around this by left-clicking in another
window; then a Snarf in the original window's tag
will work as desired.
> how to reduce
> redundancy of typing and movement.
i use ESC a lot to select some text i've just
typed. it doesn't work in all circumstances,
but for quick Edit and :/... tag commands that
contain spaces, it's very quick and useful.
it's worth knowing the right-click null-selection expansion
rules, as they can save an explicit selection, which
is always slower.
the main thing that makes the mouse so useful
and versatile in acme is the chorded cut and paste.
it makes the mouse into a genuinely useful manipulation
tool in its own right - cut and paste comprises a significant
proportion of all development activity, in my experience.
only problem is if you ever use Safari and accidentally
do a chorded-cut, it crashes it instantly!
cheers,
rog.
Connor Smith
Ethan Grammatikidis <eek...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> > Umm, Plan 9 relevance: I don't have to fingertwist in Plan 9!
> > Actually I can't remember using Esc anywhere, and of course the
> > F[1-12] keys are unused, and a proper terminal boots with the
> > Control key to the left of the 'a', so I've got no complaints.
>
> I find mouse chording quite 'twisting'. :/
I have a problem with the Cut mouse chord, as I usually use my
forefinger for the middle mouse button. But Paste feels completely
natural. Perhaps mouse buttons 2 & 3 for Cut would be less "twisting"?
cls
erik quanstrom
> ``but i want to be slow AND, overall, inaccurate!''
we have folks like that around here. they work for
the county.
- erik
J.R. Mauro
>> perhaps i should have taken piano, but i find the
>
> That's an interesting observation. As it turns out I
> do play, and it's certainly possible that it colors my
> taste in UIs.
The weirdest thing about piano for me (typist first) is pressing more
than one key at once very often. That really bemused me.
>
>> contortions kbd-based editors such as vi or emacs
>> require to be quite irritating indeed. fumbling for
>
> I don't disagree with you there.
vi isn't so bad because it has a huge command language. I was always
fond of it, but now I'm appreciating sam's more spartan, elegant
command set more.
>
>> the esc key takes ones left hand out of position
>
> I'm less sensitive to esc, probably because I used teco
> heavily in college. Of course, the fact that esc is in
> the wrong place on current keyboards doesn't help
> any.
Indeed. I remap caps to be escape, someplace where it should be.
>
>> i've enjoyed using ibm's trackpoint, but i've got
>> two thumbs and acme needs three buttons.
>> clearly there's room for improvement in input
>> devices.
>
> Agreed on both points.
I like Apple's new mice, but you can't chord with them. I got it
before I got into plan 9. Now I want to chuck it.
J.R. Mauro
> few lines and want to edit them.
Hold mode is a godsend
jo...@csplan9.rit.edu
Ditch the scrollwheel mouse and buy one of these:
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3076/ltmm3u.jpg
Should be able to find them used for a few bucks--I just picked one up
at Weird Stuff for $3.
The three-button Logitech mice are stellar for chording, because it's
meant for you to have index finger on 1, middle on 2, and ring finger
on 3, and it accomodates them comfortably. Also, you don't have the
scrollwheel buckling and rolling around as you try to mid-click. I
have about 4 of the Logitechs and use them whenever possible.
John
Kris Maglione
>Arguing about mouse vs keyboard misses the point.
>I'm very happy with acme's use of the mouse, but
>acme's power comes from the rest of its design.
That was exactly my point.
--
Kris Maglione
One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The
proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this.
--Friedrich Nietzsche
Uriel
> is, I wish they were slightly more Unix-ized instead of whatever
> arbitrary junk they decided on back in the ITS days. Ctrl-U should
> delete from your cursor to the start of the line, and Ctrl-H should do
> a backspace, not open Help!
I have been so annoyed by how various programs mess up the traditional
Unix text editing keyboard shortcuts that I have started to document
how to bring them back:
I specially hate the trend to map ^W to closing the current window,
I'm happily editing some text, make a typo or change my mind about the
last word, press ^W, and pooff, all my work is gone.
*arrrrrrrrrggggggg*.
Anyway, hope people finds it useful, and please send me any extra info
on how to implement/configure/restore the standard Unix behavior in
any other environments and apps.
I also would be interested in hearing more details on the exact
origins of ^H ^W and ^U.
Now back to your usual 9fans schedule, enjoy your keyboard vs. mouse flame
uriel
P.S.: I even recently wrote a Google Chrome extension to implement the
Unix text editing keyboard shortcuts in web pages, it works fairly
well so far: http://repo.cat-v.org/burning_chrome/hosaka/ next task is
implementing acme-like mouse chording ;)
Russ Cox
> on how to implement/configure/restore the standard Unix behavior in
> any other environments and apps.
On a Mac:
mkdir -p $HOME/Library/KeyBindings
cat >$HOME/Library/KeyBindings <<EOF
{
"^u" = "deleteToBeginningOfLine:";
"^w" = "deleteWordBackward:";
}
EOF
will make ^U and ^W work across all applications.
> P.S.: I even recently wrote a Google Chrome extension to implement the
> Unix text editing keyboard shortcuts in web pages, it works fairly
> well so far: http://repo.cat-v.org/burning_chrome/hosaka/ next task is
> implementing acme-like mouse chording ;)
Neat. If you could make the tab key actually generate
a tab character, that would be fantastic.
Russ
Russ Cox
On a Mac:
mkdir -p $HOME/Library/KeyBindings
cat >$HOME/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict <<EOF
{
"^u" = "deleteToBeginningOfLine:";
"^w" = "deleteWordBackward:";
}
EOF
will make ^U and ^W work across all applications.
Russ
Uriel
>> Anyway, hope people finds it useful, and please send me any extra info
>> on how to implement/configure/restore the standard Unix behavior in
>> any other environments and apps.
>
> On a Mac:
>
> mkdir -p $HOME/Library/KeyBindings
> cat >$HOME/Library/KeyBindings <<EOF
> {
> "^u" = "deleteToBeginningOfLine:";
> "^w" = "deleteWordBackward:";
> }
> EOF
>
> will make ^U and ^W work across all applications.
Awesome! I added it to http://unix-kb.cat-v.org/OSX
Thanks!
>> P.S.: I even recently wrote a Google Chrome extension to implement the
>> Unix text editing keyboard shortcuts in web pages, it works fairly
>> well so far: http://repo.cat-v.org/burning_chrome/hosaka/ next task is
>> implementing acme-like mouse chording ;)
>
> Neat. If you could make the tab key actually generate
> a tab character, that would be fantastic.
Ah, that is a good one, I think it should be possible, I will try to
get it for the next version (need to update for the new extension
packaging format anyway).
I do override the extremely annoying mapping of backspace to the back
button when a text field is not focused, which is also extremely
frustrating when you hit it by mistake and your current page (often
with all text) is lost.
Oh, and note that unfortunately due to current limitations in the
Chrome extensions API, this changes only apply to text fields in the
page, not to the url bar :(
uriel
>
> Russ
>
>
Lyndon Nerenberg
> and Ctrl-H should do
> a backspace,
(global-set-key "\C-h" 'delete-backward-char)
(global-set-key "\M-?" 'help-command)
Emacs may be an atomic hammer, but it's sure as hell a customizable
atomic hammer.
I rarely use emacs these days, but occasionally it's the correct blunt
instrument for the task at hand, and that's solely because you can
completely transmogrify its functionality using elisp.
--lyndon
Ethan Grammatikidis
Uriel <uri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have a weird love-hate relationship with keybindings in Emacs. That
> > is, I wish they were slightly more Unix-ized instead of whatever
> > arbitrary junk they decided on back in the ITS days. Ctrl-U should
> > delete from your cursor to the start of the line, and Ctrl-H should do
> > a backspace, not open Help!
>
> I have been so annoyed by how various programs mess up the traditional
> Unix text editing keyboard shortcuts that I have started to document
> how to bring them back:
>
> http://unix-kb.cat-v.org
>
> I specially hate the trend to map ^W to closing the current window,
> I'm happily editing some text, make a typo or change my mind about the
> last word, press ^W, and pooff, all my work is gone.
> *arrrrrrrrrggggggg*.
Trend? It's *the* way forward for the shiny sexy pretty Freedesktop.org era!!!
I was almost sure it came from Windows, but a: I was on my nephew's XP
box the other day & found it didn't work anymore if it ever did, and b:
last I tried OS X Command-W closes windows there, which kinda corresponds
to ctrl-W except for the little detail of not messing up emacs & foo.
(See why I can't quite stop liking OS X? In these little things it's
saner than anything built on Linux in the last 5-10 years.)
>
> Anyway, hope people finds it useful, and please send me any extra info
> on how to implement/configure/restore the standard Unix behavior in
> any other environments and apps.
>
> I also would be interested in hearing more details on the exact
> origins of ^H ^W and ^U.
^H goes back to ASCII if not before, it's the ASCII control code for backspace.
I briefly used a text editor that emulated WordStar. ^W was the way to kill a word on that. I suspect more bindings go back to WordStar, not sure.
^U I have no idea about.
>
> Now back to your usual 9fans schedule, enjoy your keyboard vs. mouse flame
>
> uriel
>
> P.S.: I even recently wrote a Google Chrome extension to implement the
> Unix text editing keyboard shortcuts in web pages, it works fairly
> well so far: http://repo.cat-v.org/burning_chrome/hosaka/ next task is
> implementing acme-like mouse chording ;)
>
> > The ^H problem is especially annoying on
> > my Slackware box, where I apparently can't hit the Backspace key in
> > console-mode Emacs or else I'll open the help window. Still, emacs
> > makes for a decent dev environment (it's where I write most of my Unix
> > code) and if I ever got motivated enough, it's nice that it has a
> > fully-featured Lisp environment for extending stuff.
> >
> >
> > John
> > --
> > "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS
> > reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C,
> > Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba
> >
> >
>
Rob Pike
-rob
John Floren
> I believe ^H ^W ^U date back at least to TENEX.
>
> -rob
>
>
I just checked, ^H and ^W were the same in ITS's :EMACS
Charles Forsyth
i found that with nearly all the ones i tried, but
the small Gigaware wireless optical notebook mouse cat. number 26-284
from Radio Shack has a scrollwheel with enough resistance
that it doesn't do that, and works well in acme.
don't confuse that mouse with another larger Gigaware optical
wireless mouse (different number) that hasn't got the same property!
Aaron W. Hsu
> Arguing about mouse vs keyboard misses the point.
> I'm very happy with acme's use of the mouse, but
> acme's power comes from the rest of its design.
I decided to try Acme not because of the heavy reliance on the mouse (I am
perfectly happy to use the mouse of the keyboard), but because it has a
relatively novel and I am hoping productive philosophy on the interface
design and interaction of programs in general. The idea that I can reuse
and customize interfaces "at the moment" to what I need the most right
then attracts me. The stream of text oriented design that let's me perform
operations on selections of text that I would normally have a harder time
describing in Vi gives me the warm and fuzzies. The mouse is an effective
device, and so far, Acme has made good use of it, but the combination of
that plus the reusability and usefulness of all the elements of the
interface makes things that much better.
Aaron W. Hsu
--
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. -- C. S. Lewis
Aaron W. Hsu
wrote:
> perhaps i should have taken piano, but i find the
> contortions kbd-based editors such as vi or emacs
> require to be quite irritating indeed. fumbling for
> the esc key takes ones left hand out of position
> as much as grabbing the mouse does for the right
> hand.
That's only if you have a poorly designed keyboard. All of the keyboards I
use regularly, except for the built-in version on my laptop, put the
escape, ctrl, alt, and meta keys in the right places for easy access. I'm
currently playing with mouse choices, but since I use relatively small
form factor keyboards, the mouse is always within easy reach as well.
> i've enjoyed using ibm's trackpoint, but i've got
> two thumbs and acme needs three buttons.
> clearly there's room for improvement in input
> devices.
I haven't had any trouble using Acme's chords with the trackpoint, and in
fact, the trackpoint is -- I believe -- a good deal more effective with
its three buttons than most of the other interface designs I have seen
outside of the multi-touch interface on the Macbooks.
Aaron W. Hsu
> Ditch the scrollwheel mouse and buy one of these:
> http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3076/ltmm3u.jpg
>
> Should be able to find them used for a few bucks--I just picked one up
> at Weird Stuff for $3.
>
> The three-button Logitech mice are stellar for chording, because it's
> meant for you to have index finger on 1, middle on 2, and ring finger
> on 3, and it accomodates them comfortably. Also, you don't have the
> scrollwheel buckling and rolling around as you try to mid-click. I
> have about 4 of the Logitechs and use them whenever possible.
The mouse I currently use is a Kensington Expert Mouse, but I've got a
Contour Perfit Mouse on order to see whether it is any better.
<http://us.kensington.com/html/2200.html>
<http://ergo.contourdesign.com/products/product-detail.aspx?id6>
Both of these mice have true middle buttons. The reason I am checking out
the Perfit is because it seems to have a nice design and the middle
dragging should be easier than with the trackball.
Aaron W. Hsu
wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I am taking the Acme workflow for a spin.
I had no idea people would pounce on this topic like they did. :-! Thanks
for all the advice and the entertaining read for a new Acme user.
mattm...@proweb.co.uk
> if the amount of text in the window is relatively small, then
> just selecting all the text by dragging from start to end
> and chord cut/paste is usually fastest.
>
> when there's lots of text, it can be better to
> select all the text by typing ":," in the tag and
> right-clicking it; then middle click "Snarf" to
> copy it to the snarf buffer.
>
I select it (by drag or :,) and press escape for cut (and then paste it
back in again if it's to copy)
Though in doing this I often find myself pressing Esc in shell windows
and not getting what I wanted.
Also often you'll see my hand move towards the mouse and return to the
kb because I changed my mind or be hovering somewhere over the numeric
keypad waiting for my brain to decide what to do with it.
Also I have two mice connected to my computer, one with a scrollwheel
and one without.
I've also got a perfit mouse which has no scroll wheel on the middle
button but two for use with the thumb, sadly the one I picked up cheap
(i.e. $30 !) is a little too large for my girly hands.
And one of these one handed keyboards :
http://www.proweb.co.uk/~matt/maltron.jpg
Though I'm not up to any kind of speed with it, and I want to keep my
eyes open for a left handed one instead (or get better with a left
handed mouse).
Uriel
And what of ^A and ^E? I have heard them being credited to Emacs, but
people believes so many silly things this days...
Peace
uriel
Russ Cox
> a tab character, that would be fantastic.
I'm apparently not the only one. Firefox extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3955
Russ
J.R. Mauro
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions?
>
Perhaps only tangential to what you are after, but there are little
scripts like ind, unind, quote, and powerful things like fmt, awk,
etc. that you can process your text with. Simply type a pipe char and
then the command in a tag (e.g. |ind ), select some text, select the
command, and middle click. I've been writing a bunch of little rc
scripts to help with my day-to-day formatting needs. This is also tons
of fun in Sam.
Aaron W. Hsu
> I've also got a perfit mouse which has no scroll wheel on the middle
> button but two for use with the thumb, sadly the one I picked up cheap
> (i.e. $30 !) is a little too large for my girly hands.
Did you check the sizing chart that they have? The Perfit mice are
designed to be bigger than the usual mouse for a specific hand, because
the whole hand rests on it, and the buttons are designed to be clicked
with the larger knuckle of the finger rather than with the tip of the
finger. I just got mine, and it's definitely bigger than other mice I have
used (though smaller than the trackball), but so far I am liking it,
though it is taking some time to get used to the motions.
Balwinder S Dheeman
> Arguing about mouse vs keyboard misses the point.
> I'm very happy with acme's use of the mouse, but
> acme's power comes from the rest of its design.
True, but seems to me, by other peoples' responses and, or difficulties
faced by them, that it's a time to design a new pointing device operated
by feet ;)
--
Balwinder S "bdheeman" Dheeman Registered Linux User: #229709
Anu'z Linux@HOME (Unix Shoppe) Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192
Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India Plan9, T2, Arch/Debian/FreeBSD/XP
Home: http://werc.homelinux.net/ Visit: http://counter.li.org/
sqweek
> On 07/02/2009 01:22 AM, Russ Cox wrote:
>> Arguing about mouse vs keyboard misses the point.
>> I'm very happy with acme's use of the mouse, but
>> acme's power comes from the rest of its design.
>
> True, but seems to me, by other peoples' responses and, or difficulties
> faced by them, that it's a time to design a new pointing device operated
> by feet ;)
Let me know of any developments, I've been wanting one of them for years :)
-sqweek
Roman Shaposhnik
Good news! Your wait is finally over!
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=MIDI+Foot+Controller
Thanks,
Roman.
P.S. Although personally, I prefer something like this:
http://www.pcdictate.com/Philips_LFH_2310_USB_Foot_Pedal_Control_p/lfh2310.htm
sqweek
> On Jul 3, 2009, at 5:34 AM, sqweek wrote:
>>
>> 2009/7/3 Balwinder S Dheeman <bsd.S...@cto.homelinux.net>:
>>>
>>> faced by them, that it's a time to design a new pointing device operated
>>> by feet ;)
>>
>> Let me know of any developments, I've been wanting one of them for years
>> :)
>
> Good news! Your wait is finally over!
> http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=MIDI+Foot+Controller
I only see pedals, nothing that would qualify as a pointing device...
-sqweek
hiro
Ethan Grammatikidis
That last looks interesting, but it's still switches, no? Now, I don't know why no-one else has brought up gaming gear.
http://www.chproducts.com/retail/pedals.html
Note choice of airplane rudder control (2-3 axes) or vehicle throttle/brake-type operation (1-2 axes). Pedals often come with USB steering wheels & flight yokes. AFAIK the USB HID standard covers pedals yokes and wheels.
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/Usb_steering_wheel.html
I can't help laughing at the thought of one of these wheels hooked up to a plan 9 machine!
ron minnich
re's to effect. It's really worth playing around with X// and friends.
Having (e.g.) 32 Acme windows up and applying a command to 1/2 of them
is really very nice.
The ease with which one can apply a shell command to a blob of text is
also quite nice. It's kind of like having a semi-interactive pipeline.
ron
Balwinder S Dheeman
> I don't get it, how would you be using your feet in a sufficiently accurate way?
IMHO, competent dancers and, or skiers may or may not become a good
programmers, but good programmers can mostly play better over a mouse
even if it's operated by feet.
PS: Practice makes a person perfect ;)
mattm...@proweb.co.uk
> http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/Usb_steering_wheel.html
> I can't help laughing at the thought of one of these wheels hooked up to a plan 9 machine!
>
>
Gregory Pavelcak
Ethan Grammatikidis
Woohoo! I want one. :D I wouldn't need the flame retardant gear, my system isn't designed as idiotically as the starship Enterprise...
cinap_...@gmx.de
seems to be a bad idea.
--
cinap
Ethan Grammatikidis
Yeah, it's also a deeply wierd thing to do unless the terminals require at least several megawatts. O.o Each... I can't think of any reason for that. The displays may be print-quality (2000dpi) and the touch layer supposedly able to read fingerprints, but that's not far beyond current tech. Superluminal signalling signalling seems not to require much power as the tiny com badges feature delay-free communication at least as far as lunar orbit. Yes I've done this before. :)
How far off topic are we now? Can we get away with carrying on? :)
John Floren
> On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 20:57:19 +0200
> cinap_...@gmx.de wrote:
>
>> yeah... connecting terminals to warp energy plasma conduits
>> seems to be a bad idea.
>
> Yeah, it's also a deeply wierd thing to do unless the terminals require at least several megawatts. O.o Each... I can't think of any reason for that. The displays may be print-quality (2000dpi) and the touch layer supposedly able to read fingerprints, but that's not far beyond current tech. Superluminal signalling signalling seems not to require much power as the tiny com badges feature delay-free communication at least as far as lunar orbit. Yes I've done this before. :)
>
> How far off topic are we now? Can we get away with carrying on? :)
>
I'm willing to invoke Godwin to prevent carrying on.
John
--
"I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS
reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C,
Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba
Jason Catena
Not unless you're wearing Spock ears.
Ethan Grammatikidis
John Floren <slawm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Ethan Grammatikidis<eek...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> > On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 20:57:19 +0200
> > cinap_...@gmx.de wrote:
> >
> >> yeah... connecting terminals to warp energy plasma conduits
> >> seems to be a bad idea.
> >
> > Yeah, it's also a deeply wierd thing to do unless the terminals require at least several megawatts. O.o Each... I can't think of any reason for that. The displays may be print-quality (2000dpi) and the touch layer supposedly able to read fingerprints, but that's not far beyond current tech. Superluminal signalling signalling seems not to require much power as the tiny com badges feature delay-free communication at least as far as lunar orbit. Yes I've done this before. :)
> >
> > How far off topic are we now? Can we get away with carrying on? :)
> >
>
> I'm willing to invoke Godwin to prevent carrying on.
Yeah, a couple of short steps from here and I'm sure I'd find myself arguing something highly controversial, (via political reasons for the vulnerable centralised computer architecture,) so I'll shut up now.
>
> John
> --
> "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS
> reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C,
> Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba
>
J.R. Mauro
> On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 20:57:19 +0200
> cinap_...@gmx.de wrote:
>
>> yeah... connecting terminals to warp energy plasma conduits
>> seems to be a bad idea.
>
> Yeah, it's also a deeply wierd thing to do unless the terminals require at least several megawatts. O.o Each...
And apprently they forgot how to make fuses by the late 2200s, because
the consoles all explode when overloaded.