[9fans] Using the Acme Editor
Wendell xe
Searching the 9fans archive, I found admonitions that you have to learn Acme's very different operating paradigm, but no specific advice. So I'm posting here a list of editor features I miss in Acme. For each item, what is the Acme way of approaching it?
I hope that the replys in this thread will serve as a reference for others trying to learn Acme.
01. Toggle on/off line wrapping
02. Toggle on/off EOL character display
03. Display line numbers
04. Display ruler
05. Rectangluar block selection
06. Search and replace with confirmation at each item
07. Automatic insertion of spaces for tabs
08. Syntax highlighting of code
09. Code folding
10. Code clips/completion
11. Bookmarks
12. Display file diff with locked parallel windows
13. Customize the contextual display of commands in the tag line
14. Customize the color scheme
15. Change fonts
16. HTML tag matching
17. Display (in status bar?) the Unicode ID of glyph at cursor
18. Display right-to-left text
Also, regarding Acme's use as a file browser:
19. Open new directories in the same window, so that you don't get a desktop full of windows as you drill down through a directory tree.
ron minnich
> Seeking an alternative to vi and emacs, I've been giving Acme a try (acme-sac, actually). After reading the articles and man pages and playing with it for a few days, I'll admit I don't see how Acme could be even remotely competitive with vim/emacs for editing code.
>
You have to learn it.
If you want emacs and vi, you won't get them with acme -- besides, you
already had them, remember?
Acme is a very nice tool. But you have to climb the learning curve,
and there's no escaping it.
I don't know how else to put it. Most times, I use acme, but still use
emacs and vi as well. They are different.
FWIW, there's lots of people who think emacs and vi are a joke for
code use, and use the more sophisticated IDEs out there. To each his
own.
ron
erik quanstrom
> 02. Toggle on/off EOL character display
> 03. Display line numbers
> 04. Display ruler
> 05. Rectangluar block selection
> 06. Search and replace with confirmation at each item
> 07. Automatic insertion of spaces for tabs
> 08. Syntax highlighting of code
> 09. Code folding
> 10. Code clips/completion
> 11. Bookmarks
> 12. Display file diff with locked parallel windows
> 13. Customize the contextual display of commands in the tag line
> 14. Customize the color scheme
i don't see how any of these would be useful
to me. in particular, i especially do not want
a ruler or any ascii-graphical bits. if i want a
typesetter, i'll use one.
if you are the type who wants a hammer with
an lcd temperature display, i would venture
that plan 9 tools are not for you.
> 16. HTML tag matching
this could be a useful addition. it's an easy fix.
> 15. Change fonts
B2 "Font $fontname". B2 means select with the
middle button. for example,
Font /lib/font/bit/cyberbit/mod14.font
> 17. Display (in status bar?) the Unicode ID of glyph at cursor
B2 ">unicode -n `{cat}"
> 18. Display right-to-left text
this is a plan 9 "limitation". although it is an
interesting philisophical question if a text
editor should get involved in such complications.
it seems to me that the zero-width combiners and
directional markers make unicode poor-man's
metafont masquerading as a character set.
then again, i'm a well-known luddite.
- erik
Robert Raschke
vein of Java plus web stuff, maybe even J2EE, or maybe the scourge of
the editing world, Python.
If that's the case and you have to deal with other people's code, Acme
is probably not going to help you very much. In fact Acme will make
the shortcomings of any code you are looking at a lot more obvious.
For me, that's a crucial thing. Keeps my code in check purely through
the text of it.
Acme's strengths lie in navigating, writing and changing code that is
of a certain standard.
Just my thoughts,
Robby
Ramon de Vera
stretched acme out as far as the other guys might have)...
On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 9:52 AM, Wendell xe <wend...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Seeking an alternative to vi and emacs, I've been giving Acme a try (acme-sac, actually). After reading the articles and man pages and playing with it for a few days, I'll admit I don't see how Acme could be even remotely competitive with vim/emacs for editing code.
>
Isn't "I don't see how Acme could be even remotely competitive..."
seem a tad harsh? :-) It is just a little different than what you
normally use. Acme is pretty powerful. And how I answer your questions
below might shed light with you on how it is used.
> Searching the 9fans archive, I found admonitions that you have to learn Acme's very different operating paradigm, but no specific advice. So I'm posting here a list of editor features I miss in Acme. For each item, what is the Acme way of approaching it?
>
> I hope that the replys in this thread will serve as a reference for others trying to learn Acme.
>
> 01. Toggle on/off line wrapping
You can't. It always wraps lines around.
> 02. Toggle on/off EOL character display
Edit ,x/\n/ c/<EOL>\n/
Undo
:-)
> 03. Display line numbers
Edit =
...will show the line number where dot is, but to display the line
number to the side of each line. I have no use for such a thing so I
haven't even thought about it at all as I use acme.
> 04. Display ruler
No such thing in acme.
> 05. Rectangluar block selection
No such thing in acme.
> 06. Search and replace with confirmation at each item
Place in the tagline your edit line,
Edit s/oldtext/newtext/
1. B3-sweep or B3 your text to search
2. B2 your edit line
repeat process from 1 till you are happy
> 07. Automatic insertion of spaces for tabs
No automatic tab-to-space replacements. Naturally you can do it
from an Edit command.
> 08. Syntax highlighting of code
No such thing in acme.
> 09. Code folding
No such thing built-in to acme.
> 10. Code clips/completion
Place cursor where you want to insert text and use the '<' command
and provide the command that outputs your text.
OR
B2-sweep your keyword, and use the '|' command, and provide the
command that will accept the keyword and spit out the corresponding
text.
> 11. Bookmarks
Have a separate bookmark file (or maybe even in the tag line
before you do a Dump), that uses the filepath:linenumber format and
just B3 the 'bookmarks'.
> 12. Display file diff with locked parallel windows
Acme doesn't have a built-in 'diff mode'
> 13. Customize the contextual display of commands in the tag line
If you mean dynamically change available commands in the tag line
as you move around your code, no there is no such thing. (It might be
an interesting acme file server exercise).
If you mean preserve common commands that you use often for the
current work you are doing you can just place the stuff you want in
the tag line and Dump/Load it or pre-load a Guide file.
> 14. Customize the color scheme
Edit the acme code, recompile and enjoy :-) :-) :-) No color scheme
changing stuff built-in to acme. I know some people want their baby
green, polka dot inspired color schemes but acme isn't about that.
:-)
> 15. Change fonts
The Font command does this as well as the command line parameters
to Acme, please see manual.
> 16. HTML tag matching
If you mean automatic tag completion, you can do that using my
suggestion in 10.
If you mean just matching the start and end tags, acme does not
have that built-in or something but you can code (or use Edit?) for
that
> 17. Display (in status bar?) the Unicode ID of glyph at cursor
Eric already answered that.
> 18. Display right-to-left text
Eric already answered that.
>
> Also, regarding Acme's use as a file browser:
>
> 19. Open new directories in the same window, so that you don't get a desktop full of windows as you drill down through a directory tree.
I think some of the other guys have made slight code changes so
that acme will do what you stated, so you'd need to really modify the
acme code, recompile and enjoy.
The other guys might have even better suggestions.
Resistance is futile, you _will_ be assimilated. :-)
Best Regards,
Mon
Russ Cox
> 01. Toggle on/off line wrapping
> 02. Toggle on/off EOL character display
Write shorter lines.
> 03. Display line numbers
You can go to a specific line with :n and
find out the current line with Edit =
> 04. Display ruler
If you really care, you can make a little file called ruler
that contains the text you want and then just open the
file in a window above the one you are editing.
But the Acme way is not to care what column you're on.
Just say no.
> 05. Rectangluar block selection
Someone posted a C program once that interpreted
the current selection as a rectangular block (starting
in the column where the selection began, ending
in the column where it ended, and spanning the lines
that it spans) and replaced each subline with a given
piece of text. But again, just say no.
> 06. Search and replace with confirmation at each item
Put the cursor at the top of the file.
In the tag, type and select
Edit .+#0/old/c/new/
and middle click it. That will search for old, replace it
with new, and scroll the file to highlight and show the
replacement. If you don't like that change, you middle
click Undo. Either way, middle clicking the Edit command
will find and change the next occurrence. So you can
just sit there middle clicking the Edit command until
you find one that you didn't mean to change, Undo,
and then go back to middle clicking Edit. Selecting
the command in the tag keeps acme from moving the
mouse to the changed selection, so that it is easier
to repeat the command.
> 07. Automatic insertion of spaces for tabs
Just say no. If you are forced to use spaces,
acme -a makes them a bit more bearable
by filling in the previous line's indentation
when you type Enter.
> 08. Syntax highlighting of code
Just say no.
> 09. Code folding
This is interesting but doesn't fit easily into the model.
I do wish there were a way to do this, and not just for
folding code. But it would probably break the very deep
assumption in acme that window contents are ordinary
text streams. Acme gets a lot of benefit from that one
decision, but this might be one of the drawbacks.
On the other hand, not having code folding means that
you have to write good code to begin with. Code folding
might be the C++ equivalent of Emacs paren matching for Lisp:
The various ML dialects share the same flaw in their
syntax. They lack a simple property I call editor
friendliness. An editor friendly language has the property
that a simple calculation is all that is needed to locate the
beginning of an expression when one is at the end of an
expression.
As you can guess, Lisp is a very editor friendly language.
Because of this fact, an experienced Emacs user realizes
nearly all of the benefits of structure based editing
without suffering from its restrictions.
--- John D. Ramsdell
The various Lisp dialects share the same flaw in their
syntax. They lack a simple property I call human
friendliness. A human friendly language has the property
that syntactic constructs are different enough from one
another that a simple visual inspection is all that is
needed to locate the beginning of an expression when one
is at the end of an expression.
As you can guess, Lisp is a very human unfriendly
language. Because of this fact, an experienced Lisp user
realizes that it is virtually impossible to write Lisp
programs of any size without substantial mechanical
assistance.
--- Andrew Koenig
You're better off writing code that doesn't need folding
to be read.
> 10. Code clips/completion
Just say no.
> 11. Bookmarks
Make a file with things like
/sys/src/cmd/acme/scrl.c
/sys/src/cmd/acme/scrl.c:100
/sys/src/cmd/acme/scrl.c:/^mousethread
and open it.
> 12. Display file diff with locked parallel windows
Personally, I'm happy with running diff -n and
right-clicking the headers to display a particular
section in context. This is actually better than the
locked windows because at any point you can go
do something else and then come back to it.
> 13. Customize the contextual display of commands in the tag line
Just say no.
> 14. Customize the color scheme
Just say no.
> 15. Change fonts
As Erik pointed out, there is a Font command that applies
to the whole window. Changing fonts inside the text
would break the text model.
> 16. HTML tag matching
Easy external program.
> 17. Display (in status bar?) the Unicode ID of glyph at cursor
As Erik pointed out, you can always cut and paste a character
and feed it to the "unicode" program. You don't even need
Erik's > command. Just type the word unicode (or "unicode -n")
in a tag somewhere, highlight the letter you want,
and then 2-1 click unicode.
> 18. Display right-to-left text
This is essentially left as an exercise to the interested user.
There are a lot of difficult issues here, and none of the
developers use right-to-left text.
> Also, regarding Acme's use as a file browser:
>
> 19. Open new directories in the same window,
> so that you don't get a desktop full of windows
> as you drill down through a directory tree.
Easy external program, but why not just type
the whole path to the directory you want, perhaps
with help from ^F?
Russ
Pietro Gagliardi
> 01. Toggle on/off line wrapping
> 02. Toggle on/off EOL character display
> 03. Display line numbers
> 04. Display ruler
> 05. Rectangluar block selection
> 06. Search and replace with confirmation at each item
> 07. Automatic insertion of spaces for tabs
> 08. Syntax highlighting of code
> 09. Code folding
> 10. Code clips/completion
> 11. Bookmarks
> 12. Display file diff with locked parallel windows
> 13. Customize the contextual display of commands in the tag line
> 14. Customize the color scheme
Acme is not an IDE. It is a text editor. If you want these facilities,
implement them yourself. That's what the source is provided for.
Some of your ideas can be implemented as external programs.
3. awk '{ print NR, $0 }' file
7. sed 's/ / /g' file > file2 && mv file2 file
12. This is harder. I suggest a program that works like so:
% pdiff a.c b.c
#include <u.h>
#include <libc.h>
int a; char a;
void
main(void) q(void)
{
...
What I suggest is to see how idiff(1) works. idiff merges two files
by allowing you to select which difference to use. The source is /sys/
src/cmd/idiff.c.
Steve Simon
> the text of it.
If I understand what you are saying I find this is really interesting.
I many of the prople I work with use syntax highlighting editors and I
often find their code difficult to read (I use sam).
In the way that the labs used to keep (I believe) an old alpha system to keep
the code "honest" (64bit and endian clean), I print out my code from
time to time to make sure its readable, to keep it honest.
perhaps its my age.
-Steve
Lyndon Nerenberg
Typically handled by 'guide' files. I.e. a file, open in an acme window,
full of B3-able search strings. E.g.:
foo.c:/^main
Also useful with B2-able command strings:
grep -n 'where_is_this_function_called_from\(' *.c
slay program | rc
--lyndon
Don't force it, use a bigger hammer.
Iruata Souza
> 7. sed 's/ / /g' file > file2 && mv file2 file
rest in peace file2.
iru
Eris Discordia
features you need or want are supported in Acme out-of-the-box. Not in any
sane, meaningful way. And if you tell the 9people you need them or want
them they'll either tell you it isn't "worth" it, or it isn't "meant" to be
done that way, or go "do it yourself." They don't understand some people
use computers for different reasons than wasting their time "for"
computers, and in ways far different from their way.
That's the gist of responses you've received before this one. I've gone
through these 9ish episodes twice. Plan 9 and the related software just
isn't for someone who wants to Get Their Job Done (tm). It's a "research"
platform for those who want to "tell" other people what they should do and
how they should do it and why any other way would be "sacrilege." No wonder
it has remained as minuscule and insignificant--9people tell you it's
"nimble," don't believe them--as it is after like 24 years of "development."
In any case, Acme is "not" comparable to vi or emacs. Themselves far
inferior to Microsoft Visual Studio, from a practical standpoint. You're
coding on Windows, go for VS .NET Express Edition, free as the air you
breathe but not free as the thoughts you think. You're coding on some
UNIX-like, go for vi or emacs, a matter of taste--I like vi better. You're
"coding" on Plan 9--makes me feel sorry for you--well, Acme is the "best"
thing you can expect. Inbreeding is bound to bring out the worst of
recessive traits; savor them :-P
Finally, if you're going to stay with the 9madness I wish you very good
luck. You're going to need it. Really.
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 8:52 AM -0700 Wendell xe
<wend...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Seeking an alternative to vi and emacs, I've been giving Acme a try
> (acme-sac, actually). After reading the articles and man pages and
> playing with it for a few days, I'll admit I don't see how Acme could be
> even remotely competitive with vim/emacs for editing code.
>
> Searching the 9fans archive, I found admonitions that you have to learn
> Acme's very different operating paradigm, but no specific advice. So I'm
> posting here a list of editor features I miss in Acme. For each item,
> what is the Acme way of approaching it?
>
> I hope that the replys in this thread will serve as a reference for
> others trying to learn Acme.
>
> 01. Toggle on/off line wrapping
> 02. Toggle on/off EOL character display
> 03. Display line numbers
> 04. Display ruler
> 05. Rectangluar block selection
> 06. Search and replace with confirmation at each item
> 07. Automatic insertion of spaces for tabs
> 08. Syntax highlighting of code
> 09. Code folding
> 10. Code clips/completion
> 11. Bookmarks
> 12. Display file diff with locked parallel windows
> 13. Customize the contextual display of commands in the tag line
> 14. Customize the color scheme
> 15. Change fonts
> 16. HTML tag matching
> 17. Display (in status bar?) the Unicode ID of glyph at cursor
> 18. Display right-to-left text
Francisco J Ballesteros
threads like the one this post might trigger on 9fans.
For everything else, we use DOS, which is windows simplified, along with edlin.
andrey mirtchovski
Steve Simon
> isn't for someone who wants to Get Their Job Done (tm).
Sorry, I have to bite.
Its because I want to "Get my job done"™ that I use plan9.
-Steve
erik quanstrom
> platform for those who want to "tell" other people what they should do and
> how they should do it and why any other way would be "sacrilege."
thanks for setting me straight. for some reason, i thought my company had shipped
several thousand units based on plan 9. i don't know what would have
given me that idea.
> No wonder
> it has remained as minuscule and insignificant--9people tell you it's
> "nimble," don't believe them--as it is after like 24 years of "development."
also, could you send me the new subtraction table we're supposed
to be using.
[Pike90] R. Pike, D. Presotto, K. Thompson, H. Trickey,
``Plan 9 from Bell Labs'',
.I
UKUUG Proc. of the Summer 1990 Conf. ,
London, England,
1990.
- erik
Federico G. Benavento
--
Federico G. Benavento
Pietro Gagliardi
> That's the gist of responses you've received before this one. I've
> gone through these 9ish episodes twice. Plan 9 and the related
> software just isn't for someone who wants to Get Their Job Done
> (tm). It's a "research" platform for those who want to "tell" other
> people what they should do and how they should do it and why any
> other way would be "sacrilege." No wonder it has remained as
> minuscule and insignificant--9people tell you it's "nimble," don't
> believe them--as it is after like 24 years of "development."
Wrong on so many levels. Plan 9 lets you Get The Job Done(TM), but in
a completely different way from *your* approach. Plan 9 obeys the UNIX
way: tools that make jobs simpler. This is augmented by 33 libraries
that provide common utilities in a transparent way. "Everything is a
UTF-8 text file or a mountable filesystem, even devices and severs"
encourages transparency of modules: you can copy a file from a Gopher
network to a mobile phone or without running a million commands. If
you are not like that, leave.
Pietro Gagliardi
Wrong on so many levels. Plan 9 lets you Get The Job Done(TM), but in
a completely different way from *your* approach. Plan 9 obeys the UNIX
way: tools that make jobs simpler. This is augmented by 33 libraries
that provide common utilities in a transparent way. "Everything is a
UTF-8 text file or a mountable filesystem, even devices and severs"
encourages transparency of modules: you can copy a file from a Gopher
network in Tokyo to a mobile phone from Mexico or have the filesystem
report how much free space is left without running a million commands
or typing a thousand lines of code. If you are not like that, leave.
Eris Discordia
"Just lurking," I overheard the "hackers" say.
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 4:12 PM -0600 andrey mirtchovski
Eris Discordia
written the nemo book--you're nemo after all. That, however, won't change
my stance on Plan 9 and the 9people. You have nothing else but
"researching" OS's and "submitting" papers. That "justifies" your 9life.
Others, like me, have some "petty" work to do. Like knowing which character
on which line they're editing or controlling how long their lines of text
get, _without_ resorting to acrobatics.
--On Wednesday, August 20, 2008 12:14 AM +0200 Francisco J Ballesteros
Jonathan Cast
> No, you justify your salary, dear Sir. I honestly respect you for having
> written the nemo book--you're nemo after all. That, however, won't change
> my stance on Plan 9 and the 9people. You have nothing else but
> "researching" OS's and "submitting" papers. That "justifies" your 9life.
> Others, like me, have some "petty" work to do.
Evidently not... (Or you'd be doing it now).
> Like knowing which character
> on which line they're editing or controlling how long their lines of text
> get, _without_ resorting to acrobatics.
jcc
Eris Discordia
Go read the responses 9people gave the original poster. You'll see why it's
_right_ on so many levels.
> Plan 9 obeys the UNIX way: tools that make jobs simpler.
A UNIX better than UNIX? I thought that was just the thing 9people claimed
to be past. Didn't I hear someone saying, "Plan 9 is not UNIX?" Ahem...
GNU's Not UNIX, too, nah?
> "Everything is a UTF-8 [...]"
Do me a favor. Fire up your beloved upas, use mail, and relay one email
through upas/smtpd to smtp.gmail.com:587 with the words "שָׁלוֹם
עֲלֵיכֶם" (Hebrew, Shalom aleichem) or "سلام علیکم"
(Arabic, Salam-on alaikom) to my address. Let's see if "the mail goes
through."
> "Everything is a UTF-8 text file or a mountable filesystem, even devices
> and severs" encourages transparency of modules: you can copy a file from
> a Gopher network in Tokyo to a mobile phone from Mexico or have the
> filesystem report how much free space is left without running a million
> commands or typing a thousand lines of code.
The path from Gopher to your PC--or it was a Mac that you had?--was paved
years ago on UNIX. Then the path from Tokyo to Mexico was built on UNIX,
and today it _runs_ on UNIX. Now, the real problem begins when you want to
get your cell phone to talk 9P-over-IP.
Do you have a 9P client for your cell phone? You "wrote" it already? Does
it run on Java? Or Symbian? Or Vendor X's proprietary embedded OS? Did you
do it on Plan 9? Or did you snatch an SDK written for some other livelier
OS?
Go fool someone else with your empty rhetoric, buddy.
> If you are not like that, leave.
No, I _am_ not like that. I also _don't_ like that. And I've left. The post
was not for you to chew on, it was for the benefit of the thread's
originator.
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 6:25 PM -0400 Pietro Gagliardi
Eris Discordia
Bite if you please. Hook, line, and sinker ;-)
What's your job?
1. Maintaining a Plan 9 system?
2. Programming a Plan 9 system?
3. Researching a Plan 9 system?
4. Or you got some job other than jobs created _around_ Plan 9 and you use
Plan 9?
(1) through (3) mean Plan 9 is your "job." You feed off of it. Dealing with
its quirks is your business. Well, that's your lot. Others are probably
luckier.
If your "job" is not 1-3 and you have a "computer job" tell me who has
allowed you to use a research platform in production environment? Are you
at Rangboom or Coraid, or implementing one of the _few_ applications Plan 9
has found in the "Real World?" Are you a freelancer? What sort of customers
do you have?
What exactly do you Get Done (tm) on Plan 9? I mean, aren't there easier
ways to do it? If yes, staying on Plan 9 is simply "fanity"--a la vanity--
and "fanity" is beyond reason; my reason, at least. If no, how come your
job's so specific that can't be done on much more widely used systems?
Probably it's just 1-3.
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:26 PM +0100 Steve Simon
<st...@quintile.net> wrote:
>> Plan 9 and the related software just
>> isn't for someone who wants to Get Their Job Done (tm).
>
David Leimbach
Pietro Gagliardi
>> Plan 9 obeys the UNIX way: tools that make jobs simpler.
>
> A UNIX better than UNIX? I thought that was just the thing 9people
> claimed to be past. Didn't I hear someone saying, "Plan 9 is not
> UNIX?" Ahem... GNU's Not UNIX, too, nah?
No, that's not what I said. I said that Plan 9 obeys the UNIX
philosophy, not that it was UNIX. GNU obeys this philosophy (up to the
point of where to draw the lines on the size of tools). And to some
extent, Windows (Windows Movie Maker doesn't call up another computer
now, does it?)
>> "Everything is a UTF-8 [...]"
>
> Do me a favor. Fire up your beloved upas, use mail, and relay one
> email through upas/smtpd to smtp.gmail.com:587 with the words
> "שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם" (Hebrew, Shalom aleichem) or
> "سلام علیکم" (Arabic, Salam-on alaikom) to my address. Let's
> see if "the mail goes through."
>
Mac, and I use OS X Mail (so I can get my hands on IMAP's folder
system). How about the fact that Simon was able to give you a
trademark symbol? Do yourself a favor: YOU test it. Look in /lib/
keyboard for some characters and send them here. If they come back as
sent, you've proven my point. Otherwise, you found a bug.
>> "Everything is a UTF-8 text file or a mountable filesystem, even
>> devices
>> and severs" encourages transparency of modules: you can copy a file
>> from
>> a Gopher network in Tokyo to a mobile phone from Mexico or have the
>> filesystem report how much free space is left without running a
>> million
>> commands or typing a thousand lines of code.
>
> The path from Gopher to your PC--or it was a Mac that you had?--was
> paved years ago on UNIX. Then the path from Tokyo to Mexico was
> built on UNIX, and today it _runs_ on UNIX. Now, the real problem
> begins when you want to get your cell phone to talk 9P-over-IP.
>
> Do you have a 9P client for your cell phone? You "wrote" it already?
> Does it run on Java? Or Symbian? Or Vendor X's proprietary embedded
> OS? Did you do it on Plan 9? Or did you snatch an SDK written for
> some other livelier OS?
>
> Go fool someone else with your empty rhetoric, buddy.
>
My rhetoric is not empty. I am not saying go ahead and write that 9P.
I'm saying the jobs are trivial, only three lines of rc:
gopherfs -m/n/gopher tokyo.ac.jp # Demonstration; don't try this
motorola -m/n/cell -M 'RAZR V3' 555 555 5555
cp /n/gopher/a/b/r.tokyo.jpg /n/cell/pictures/r.tokyo.jpg
Write that in sockets. Since that is what you use, don't you?
As for filesystem usage,
echo fsys all df | con -l /srv/fscons
Go look up the source for GNU df, and tell me if it's that simple.
>> If you are not like that, leave.
>
> No, I _am_ not like that. I also _don't_ like that. And I've left.
> The post was not for you to chew on, it was for the benefit of the
> thread's originator.
>
Good riddance. But you're missing a wonderful opportunity. Just open
your eyes.
On Aug 19, 2008, at 8:10 PM, Eris Discordia wrote:
> What exactly do you Get Done (tm) on Plan 9? I mean, aren't there
> easier ways to do it? If yes, staying on Plan 9 is simply "fanity"--
> a la vanity-- and "fanity" is beyond reason; my reason, at least. If
> no, how come your job's so specific that can't be done on much more
> widely used systems? Probably it's just 1-3.
- Programming in userland: mainly compiler design, along with a few
other projects.
- Document typesetting (I love troff). That's not on your list, is it?
- Goofing off: lots of free games
The point of this all?
Plan 9 is not JUST a research system. It is a complete operating
system. It has great tools for making greater tools, or for just
increasing (or decreasing) your productivity. If you're too blunt to
care, fuck off. You've done that to us already, on many occasions.
Eris Discordia
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 7:46 PM -0300 "Federico G. Benavento"
<bena...@gmail.com> wrote:
> relax
>
> --
> Federico G. Benavento
>
Eris Discordia
> had shipped several thousand units based on plan 9. i don't know what
> would have given me that idea.
Somebody would make a bad choice anyway. Microsoft shipped "thousands" of
copies of Microsoft Bob before they learnt about their mistake. Let's see
if your company, founded 2000, survives its Coraid Bob. And I hear your
primary source of sustenance is an AoE driver for _Linux_. You're leeching
another OS's user base and boasting doing Plan 9? Where would you be
without "Linux Support for EtherDrive (R) Storage?"
(http://support.coraid.com/support/linux/)
> also, could you send me the new subtraction table we're supposed
> to be using.
>
> [Pike90] R. Pike, D. Presotto, K. Thompson, H. Trickey,
> ``Plan 9 from Bell Labs'',
> .I
> UKUUG Proc. of the Summer 1990 Conf. ,
> London, England,
> 1990.
Yes. According to Wikipedia:
"It was developed as the research successor to Unix by the Computing
Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002."
Mid-1980s ~ 1985
Current date (here) = August 20, 2008
2008 - 1985 + 1 = 24. Update your table.
Apparently, Plan 9 was being developed some years before the paper. You
know, you gotta do something with the free time on your hand. Create an OS,
for example. And pull a paper out of it after some years.
By the way, what exactly happened to Plan 9 on 2002? Was it "dismantled?"
Or did they shut the "furnace" down?
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 6:34 PM -0400 erik quanstrom
<quan...@quanstro.net> wrote:
>> It's a "research"
>> platform for those who want to "tell" other people what they should do
>> and how they should do it and why any other way would be "sacrilege."
>
> thanks for setting me straight. for some reason, i thought my company
> had shipped several thousand units based on plan 9. i don't know what
> would have given me that idea.
>
>> No wonder
>> it has remained as minuscule and insignificant--9people tell you it's
>> "nimble," don't believe them--as it is after like 24 years of
>> "development."
>
Eris Discordia
Petty work is _petty_, you see. They give you some breaks during which you
come to desolate mailing lists and upload enlightening orations. I know,
it's a pretty miserable life--my life.
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 4:36 PM -0700 Jonathan Cast
Eris Discordia
ed.
Is it sam that attaches a file named "winmail.dat" to your emails?!
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 4:03 PM -0700 Benjamin Huntsman
<BHun...@mail2.cu-portland.edu> wrote:
> You might give Sam a try. I'm still working my way up to Acme too, but
> Sam has an edge over vi for me... ...Might be nice if there was an
> option to open a document in a default window though, but if it were a
> big enough concern, I've got the source and could make the change... :)
>
>
> -Ben
Eris Discordia
> not that it was UNIX. GNU obeys this philosophy (up to the point of where
> to draw the lines on the size of tools). And to some extent, Windows
> (Windows Movie Maker doesn't call up another computer now, does it?)
I guess "the UNIX philosophy"--whatever that vague phrase is supposed to
mean--contains "the X philosophy." The core dictum goes: "mechanism, not
policy." That is, they give you the "femur," you determine its use. Russ
Cox knows this better; he's the one at the MIT. "The Plan 9 philosophy"
goes as far as telling you to "not ask for a ruler" in your text editor
(ruler in vi := a pair of numbers; column, row).
> Mac, and I use OS X Mail (so I can get my hands on IMAP's folder system).
> How about the fact that Simon was able to give you a trademark symbol? Do
> yourself a favor: YOU test it. Look in /lib/keyboard for some characters
> and send them here. If they come back as sent, you've proven my point.
> Otherwise, you found a bug.
Plan 9 is not _my_ pet OS. 9people, and you who are too young to be a
9person, are taking pride in "UTF-8." That's been the gesture for a over a
decade. Now, it's old, it's insignificant, and Plan 9 doesn't even deliver.
Anyway, _you_ made a claim. You have to prove it. I don't even run Plan 9
anymore. Gave it up.
Steve Simon's trademark character, I presume, was generated by
[Alt]+0153--you call [Alt] an "Option" key, right? Well below 255, it's
just extended/8-bit ASCII. Not right-to-left, not even out of ISO 8859. You
could generate that character even on MS-DOS.
Though, his email's header says the charset if UTF-8. No big deal.
> gopherfs -m/n/gopher tokyo.ac.jp # Demonstration; don't try this
> motorola -m/n/cell -M 'RAZR V3' 555 555 5555
> cp /n/gopher/a/b/r.tokyo.jpg /n/cell/pictures/r.tokyo.jpg
Zing! Who wrote the fs behind /n/cell? You got Morotola to write it for you?
$ curl gopher://tokyo.ac.jp/a/b/r.tokyo.jpg
$ ifconfig cellnetif num "555 555 5555"
$ mount -t motofs /dev/cellnetif /mnt/cell
$ cp ./r.tokyo.jpg /mnt/cell/
(You gotta use an archaic version of curl. Gopher support was removed when
mammoths roamed the Earth)
Of course, motofs and cellnetif are imaginary, just like your "motorola."
The problem is the same on UNIX and Plan 9, but on UNIX it is much more
likely that you find someone who solved it before. And it is much less
likely that someone tells you it isn't "the way to do it."
Incidentally, someone I know has recently bought a Motorola A1200 that runs
a nice tiny Linux.
> Write that in sockets. Since that is what you use, don't you?
Write that in Plan 9 system calls. That is what _you_ use, don't you?
The fs's are only abstraction layers. You could implement them on _any_
system. Given you were dour enough to do it. Writing a particular fs is a
problem. Plan 9 doesn't make it any more trivial. Oh, don't tell me it's
got 9P. 9P could be any text-based protocol. What's the difference between
9P-over-IP and HTTP? Or SOAP? Or XML-WS?
> Good riddance. But you're missing a wonderful opportunity. Just open your
> eyes.
"Thank you."
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 8:30 PM -0400 Pietro Gagliardi
<piet...@mac.com> wrote:
> On Aug 19, 2008, at 7:51 PM, Eris Discordia wrote:
>>> Plan 9 obeys the UNIX way: tools that make jobs simpler.
>>
>> A UNIX better than UNIX? I thought that was just the thing 9people
>> claimed to be past. Didn't I hear someone saying, "Plan 9 is not
>> UNIX?" Ahem... GNU's Not UNIX, too, nah?
>
> No, that's not what I said. I said that Plan 9 obeys the UNIX philosophy,
> not that it was UNIX. GNU obeys this philosophy (up to the point of where
> to draw the lines on the size of tools). And to some extent, Windows
> (Windows Movie Maker doesn't call up another computer now, does it?)
>
>>> "Everything is a UTF-8 [...]"
>>
>> Do me a favor. Fire up your beloved upas, use mail, and relay one
>> email through upas/smtpd to smtp.gmail.com:587 with the words
>> "שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם" (Hebrew, Shalom aleichem) or
>> "سلام علیکم" (Arabic, Salam-on alaikom) to my address. Let's
>> see if "the mail goes through."
>>
>
> Mac, and I use OS X Mail (so I can get my hands on IMAP's folder system).
> How about the fact that Simon was able to give you a trademark symbol? Do
> yourself a favor: YOU test it. Look in /lib/keyboard for some characters
Eris Discordia
> angry.
Sir, yessir! The Marines don't do Japanese, sir!
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:31 PM -0300 Iruata Souza
<iru....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 8:51 PM, Eris Discordia
> <eris.di...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Wrong on so many levels.
>>
>> Go read the responses 9people gave the original poster. You'll see why
>> it's _right_ on so many levels.
>>
>>> Plan 9 obeys the UNIX way: tools that make jobs simpler.
>>
>> A UNIX better than UNIX? I thought that was just the thing 9people
>> claimed to be past. Didn't I hear someone saying, "Plan 9 is not UNIX?"
>> Ahem... GNU's Not UNIX, too, nah?
>>
>>> "Everything is a UTF-8 [...]"
>>
>> Do me a favor. Fire up your beloved upas, use mail, and relay one email
>> through upas/smtpd to smtp.gmail.com:587 with the words "שָׁלוֹם
>> עֲלֵיכֶם" (Hebrew, Shalom aleichem) or "سلام علیکم"
>> (Arabic, Salam-on alaikom) to my address. Let's see if "the mail goes
>> through."
>>
>>> "Everything is a UTF-8 text file or a mountable filesystem, even devices
>>> and severs" encourages transparency of modules: you can copy a file from
>>> a Gopher network in Tokyo to a mobile phone from Mexico or have the
>>> filesystem report how much free space is left without running a million
>>> commands or typing a thousand lines of code.
>>
>> The path from Gopher to your PC--or it was a Mac that you had?--was paved
>> years ago on UNIX. Then the path from Tokyo to Mexico was built on UNIX,
>> and today it _runs_ on UNIX. Now, the real problem begins when you want
>> to get your cell phone to talk 9P-over-IP.
>>
>> Do you have a 9P client for your cell phone? You "wrote" it already?
>> Does it run on Java? Or Symbian? Or Vendor X's proprietary embedded OS?
>> Did you do it on Plan 9? Or did you snatch an SDK written for some other
>> livelier OS?
>>
>> Go fool someone else with your empty rhetoric, buddy.
>>
>>> If you are not like that, leave.
>>
>> No, I _am_ not like that. I also _don't_ like that. And I've left. The
>> post was not for you to chew on, it was for the benefit of the thread's
>> originator.
>
> take it easy on the porn and get some real sex, eris. you're way too
> angry.
>
> iru
Pietro Gagliardi
for once?
Pietro Gagliardi
>> No, that's not what I said. I said that Plan 9 obeys the UNIX
>> philosophy,
>> not that it was UNIX. GNU obeys this philosophy (up to the point of
>> where
>> to draw the lines on the size of tools). And to some extent, Windows
>> (Windows Movie Maker doesn't call up another computer now, does it?)
>
> I guess "the UNIX philosophy"--whatever that vague phrase is
> supposed to mean--contains "the X philosophy." The core dictum goes:
> "mechanism, not policy." That is, they give you the "femur," you
> determine its use. Russ Cox knows this better; he's the one at the
> MIT. "The Plan 9 philosophy" goes as far as telling you to "not ask
> for a ruler" in your text editor (ruler in vi := a pair of numbers;
> column, row).
No, that's not the UNIX philosophy. That's the X/Linux/GNU philosophy.
Go read "Program Design in the UNIX Environment" by Kernighan and Pike
to see what I mean.
>
>
>> Mac, and I use OS X Mail (so I can get my hands on IMAP's folder
>> system).
>> How about the fact that Simon was able to give you a trademark
>> symbol? Do
>> yourself a favor: YOU test it. Look in /lib/keyboard for some
>> characters
>> and send them here. If they come back as sent, you've proven my
>> point.
>> Otherwise, you found a bug.
>
> Plan 9 is not _my_ pet OS. 9people, and you who are too young to be
> a 9person, are taking pride in "UTF-8." That's been the gesture for
> a over a decade. Now, it's old, it's insignificant, and Plan 9
> doesn't even deliver. Anyway, _you_ made a claim. You have to prove
> it. I don't even run Plan 9 anymore. Gave it up.
>
> Steve Simon's trademark character, I presume, was generated by [Alt]
> +0153--you call [Alt] an "Option" key, right? Well below 255, it's
> just extended/8-bit ASCII. Not right-to-left, not even out of ISO
> 8859. You could generate that character even on MS-DOS.
>
> Though, his email's header says the charset if UTF-8. No big deal.
In Plan 9, it's Alt t m, as three individual keystrokes. See
keyboard(6) to find out what your system would see as Alt. You don't
need to keep the Alt held down. Now send yourself an email with Alt f
a (the for all character) and Alt * P (uppercase pi)
>
>
>> gopherfs -m/n/gopher tokyo.ac.jp # Demonstration; don't try this
>> motorola -m/n/cell -M 'RAZR V3' 555 555 5555
>> cp /n/gopher/a/b/r.tokyo.jpg /n/cell/pictures/r.tokyo.jpg
>
> Zing! Who wrote the fs behind /n/cell? You got Morotola to write it
> for you?
>
> $ curl gopher://tokyo.ac.jp/a/b/r.tokyo.jpg
> $ ifconfig cellnetif num "555 555 5555"
> $ mount -t motofs /dev/cellnetif /mnt/cell
> $ cp ./r.tokyo.jpg /mnt/cell/
>
> (You gotta use an archaic version of curl. Gopher support was
> removed when mammoths roamed the Earth)
>
> Of course, motofs and cellnetif are imaginary, just like your
> "motorola." The problem is the same on UNIX and Plan 9, but on UNIX
> it is much more likely that you find someone who solved it before.
> And it is much less likely that someone tells you it isn't "the way
> to do it."
>
> Incidentally, someone I know has recently bought a Motorola A1200
> that runs a nice tiny Linux.
Impressive. Someone learned something from us after all. (1985 -- when
did curl come out?)
>
>
>> Write that in sockets. Since that is what you use, don't you?
>
> Write that in Plan 9 system calls. That is what _you_ use, don't you?
>
It would be about 75% shorter. And you can't just use the system
calls. libc is built around subroutines. In all, Rob Pike got
connected to an IP address in 2 lines of code compared to ~20 for
sockets. ("The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly")
>> Good riddance. But you're missing a wonderful opportunity. Just
>> open your
>> eyes.
>
> "Thank you."
No comment.
a...@9srv.net
// character on which line they're editing or controlling how long their
// lines of text get, _without_ resorting to acrobatics.
Wait, your *job* is knowing where editor cursors are and how long
lines are? Wow, that really sucks. No wonder you're so angry.
Iruata Souza
iru
a...@9srv.net
Oh, I'm waiting for a phone call before bed. What the hell.
My job has nothing to do with your 1-3. I agree with Steve exactly: I
use Plan 9 because it allows me to get my job done easier. My job
includes some programming, some document writing, lots of
reading. I've never been employed to count columns or fold lines. I
use Acme (even when not on Plan 9) because, at least for me, the
interface encourages good mental habits that help me produce
quality stuff.
I find the applications and interfaces in Plan 9 to be far more
consistent and convenient than in other systems. That's true both
for programming interfaces and user interfaces. This means I can
let the system do its job and get out of my way without having to
think about it as much as I do elsewhere.
You're also engaging in all sorts of poor logic in the "No True
Scotsman" family in order to try and exclude folks like Coraid
who're really excellent counter-examples to your claims: they
use Plan 9 not for (the benefit of) Plan 9, but because it allows them
to build products (for other people who likely have no idea Plan 9
is involved) easier.
If Acme (or Plan 9 generally) don't fit your style well, that's fine. If
the interfaces don't have the same beneficial effects for you as they
do for me, that's fine (academically, I might speculate on why).
Feel free not to use it. But to imply that people who are actually
using the system productively are either delusional or just don't
exist is highly insulting.
Anthony
Skip Tavakkolian
should be "Just stay away from Acme if you aren't lucky enough to be
stuck with Plan 9".
Skip Tavakkolian
> written the nemo book--you're nemo after all. That, however, won't change
> my stance on Plan 9 and the 9people.
as i suspected, you're here for therapy.
> You have nothing else but "researching" OS's and "submitting" papers.
> That "justifies" your 9life.
i can see you're bitter.
> Others, like me, have some "petty" work to do. Like knowing which character
> on which line they're editing or controlling how long their lines of text
> get, _without_ resorting to acrobatics.
and how does it make you feel when you know others are performing acrobatics?
andrey mirtchovski
>
here is the scary.devil.monastery of old systems programmers, after all. :)
Bruce Ellis
Others have tried and failed with your strategy.
brucee
Skip Tavakkolian
ge...@plan9.bell-labs.com
Pietro Gagliardi
Bruce Ellis
brucee
Pietro Gagliardi
On Aug 19, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Wendell xe wrote:
> 07. Automatic insertion of spaces for tabs
style(6) says not to convert tabs to spaces.
> 11. Bookmarks
If you know what text the bookmark will point to, make a comment on
the line above it:
/* C comment */
.\" troff comment
# rc/awk comment
Set the comment to the text of the bookmark. Then, search for the text
of the bookmark with the appropriate comment delimiters. Easy enough.
> 16. HTML tag matching
An awk program can do this. The idea is to interpret tags as they come
in the form of a stack:
code stack
<html> html
<head> head
html
<title> title
head
html
</b> title error: closing wrong tag
You can also check to see if tags make sense or bad tags are nested.
For example, don't see <body><body></body></body> as normal, nor
<title><b></b></title>.
Bruce Ellis
keep up the therapy and the medication.
brucee
sqweek
<eris.di...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve Simon's trademark character, I presume, was generated by [Alt]+0153
Wow. Does memorising codepoints fall under your job description aswell?
> $ curl gopher://tokyo.ac.jp/a/b/r.tokyo.jpg
> $ ifconfig cellnetif num "555 555 5555"
ifconfig: only root can do that
> $ mount -t motofs /dev/cellnetif /mnt/cell
mount: only root can do that
> $ cp ./r.tokyo.jpg /mnt/cell/
cp: /mnt/cell: permission denied
-sqweek