Re: [9fans] Emacs

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[nigel]

> nigel@9fs.org wrote:
>> No. Plan 9 has a different approach to editing and
>> development environments, such that emacs and vi
>> are not a good fit.
>
> Hey, EMACS provides a highly programmable environment that goes
> way beyond simple editing tasks.

I'm sorry if I appeared to imply anything else. I carefully
said "editing and development environments", not just "editing".

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[anothy]

// Shouldn't the editor promote... the One True Brace Style ?

in breif, no.

while i'm as much a fan of the style you've likely got in mind as i
imagine most people here are - IN C - it's not universal. as my
interjection there should have prompted, the first concern is that
i'm not always writing C. heck, i don't know about others here, but
_i'm_ not always writing _code_! i use Acme for pretty much all my
text editing needs, from coding to scratch notes to documentation
to printed letters to humans, to email. as often as not (at least),
imposing the One True Brace Style would be more of a burden than a
win. and that says nothing of languages that have differing styles
of syntax. i can only imagine how awkward using the auto-indent
style you're proposing would make programming in some of the
APL-like matrix/array math languages.

and, of course, there's the less theoretical, more practical
concern that pretty much every auto-indent system i've seen gets
things horridly wrong when faced with non-standard use, where
non-standard includes such wild and exotic things as cutting and
pasting code.

i'd further note that acme's brace matching makes it quite easy
to simply write your code ignoring the first tab and injecting it
later. and _surely_ (hopefully?) you're not advocating that the
editor understand the _language_, and impose auto-indenting
"features" on things like statements after if, for, etc.?
anothy

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[nigel]

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I find 'nose' more useful than 'elbow'.

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From: forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Emacs
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 10:07:42 +0100
Message-ID: <404a8f744e2df45761206bdde489fbef@caldo.demon.co.uk>

>>>to research the reasoning and theory behind plan9 and acme? I realize it
> >>is rather different style from traditional UNIX editing as well as the
>>>Emacs style of editing, ...
>>>
>> i'd hope so after all this time. [i said]
>>
>read as "I understand it is easy to be preconditioned
>by confident utilization of UNIX/Emacs style editing
>over long periods of time, but, there is no reason to
>dismiss a new environment without first learning how

no, i meant today must be roughly 20 years later, surely,
if not more.  i'd hope at least the style and ideally the substance
might have changed a bit in these areas.   i realise that
some older things turn out to be the best achievable,
even in computing, and some newer things are
worse than their predecessors.
in this case, however, i can't help thinking that the elapsed time
should provide some opportunity for interesting improvement.

control-meta-shift-elbow!

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[forsyth]

>>>to research the reasoning and theory behind plan9 and acme? I realize it
> >>is rather different style from traditional UNIX editing as well as the
>>>Emacs style of editing, ...
>>>
>> i'd hope so after all this time. [i said]
>>
>read as "I understand it is easy to be preconditioned
>by confident utilization of UNIX/Emacs style editing
>over long periods of time, but, there is no reason to
>dismiss a new environment without first learning how

no, i meant today must be roughly 20 years later, surely,
if not more.  i'd hope at least the style and ideally the substance
might have changed a bit in these areas.   i realise that
some older things turn out to be the best achievable,
even in computing, and some newer things are
worse than their predecessors.
in this case, however, i can't help thinking that the elapsed time
should provide some opportunity for interesting improvement.

control-meta-shift-elbow!

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[John Murdie]

On 12 Jun, forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk wrote:
>>>>to research the reasoning and theory behind plan9 and acme? I realize it
>> >>is rather different style from traditional UNIX editing as well as the
>>>>Emacs style of editing, ...
>>>>
>>> i'd hope so after all this time. [i said]
>>>
>>read as "I understand it is easy to be preconditioned
>>by confident utilization of UNIX/Emacs style editing
>>over long periods of time, but, there is no reason to
>>dismiss a new environment without first learning how
>
> no, i meant today must be roughly 20 years later, surely,
> if not more.  i'd hope at least the style and ideally the substance
> might have changed a bit in these areas.   i realise that
> some older things turn out to be the best achievable,
> even in computing, and some newer things are
> worse than their predecessors.
> in this case, however, i can't help thinking that the elapsed time
> should provide some opportunity for interesting improvement.
>
> control-meta-shift-elbow!

Or, as someone here calls it: the ``Richard III interface''*, alleging
that one has to contort one's hands and body in order to issue certain
keyboard chorded commands.

* I read that Tudor propaganda portrayed Richard of York, one-time King
  of England, as ``Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this
  breathing world, scarce half made up.'' [Shakespeare, Richard III]
--

John A. Murdie
Department of Computer Science
University of York
England

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Don]

> no, i meant today must be roughly 20 years later, surely,
> if not more.  i'd hope at least the style and ideally the substance
> might have changed a bit in these areas.   i realise that
> some older things turn out to be the best achievable,
> even in computing, and some newer things are
> worse than their predecessors.
> in this case, however, i can't help thinking that the elapsed time
> should provide some opportunity for interesting improvement.
>
Ohhh, my fault! I agree with u, too.
Don
\x01\x01\x01\x01

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

>   n> Acme has everything I need and I'm more than ur avg developer ;)
>
> There's something wrong with your keyboard. It's dropping characters.
>

He was using emacs after knowing acme; his emacs was so hungry for
keybindings that ate some of the regular characters. I suggest to redirect
the emacs standard i/o from another emacs after  M-x doctor.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[forsyth]

>>to research the reasoning and theory behind plan9 and acme? I realize it
>>is rather different style from traditional UNIX editing as well as the
>>Emacs style of editing, ...

i'd hope so after all this time.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Don]

> >>to research the reasoning and theory behind plan9 and acme? I realize it
> >>is rather different style from traditional UNIX editing as well as the
> >>Emacs style of editing, ...
>
> i'd hope so after all this time.
>
*snicker snicker*
Cute, forsyth ;)
read as "I understand it is easy to be preconditioned
by confident utilization of UNIX/Emacs style editing
over long periods of time, but, there is no reason to
dismiss a new environment without first learning how
its theory works relative to the environments you are
already 'settled' in to. Putting the effort in to doing
the research, despite the possible time factor, is
imperative to achieving a global view of not only the
new environment, but, also the old environment as well."
summed up in a somewhat (sympathetic?) context. hohoho!
lol
Don

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[nigel]

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I perhaps should have been a bit clearer that understanding the
philosphy is vital, and reading the documents is the only way at the
moment.  This is not optimal I accept.

You cannot roll up to Plan 9 and use it on the assumption that it
provides a standard Unix environment, with some extra goodies.  Plan 9
is package; you have to work in a different way to get the benefit.

As I switch between many development environments in my work, I know
the good and bad bits of all the options.  I wouldn't be working with
Plan 9 if I didn't percieve a benefit.

If your only requirements are a C compiler and an editor, and you have
a project to do, then to justify Plan 9 as the development environment
you must use it in the way it is designed to be used.

That, at the moment, will require some reading around.  I can see that
if familiar tools were available you might be able to get your work
done in a traditional way, while soaking up some of the 'culture' of
Plan 9, without losing too much time, but unfortunately that's not an
option.

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From: forsyth@vitanuova.com
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Emacs
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 11:10:08 +0100
Message-ID: <20020610101000.F2D4219991@mail.cse.psu.edu>

sam is by no means `like notepad'.  i've used both.  sam is the older
of the two visual editors, and the newer one, acme, includes the
more powerful features of sam (notably structural regular expressions
and the editing command structure) but is an environment
(with a significant nod to Oberon) that is closer in functionality
to emacs but with a different approach to integrating new functions
such as multi-file editing, mail, news, wiki, and other things.

it would be helpful if there were a more tutorial introduction to acme
i suppose, but have a look at the paper, not just the manual page.
similarly, what can be done with the Edit verb is probably not by
any means obvious, so it's not surprising you  concluded as you did.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

Yes, it does, I was one of those guys that made cdplayers
in lisp just to embed them into emacs. Since I tried acme,
I have been frustrated everytime I had to use emacs, so beware,
don't even try acme if you plan to go back to unix ☺.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[forsyth]

sam is by no means `like notepad'.  i've used both.  sam is the older
of the two visual editors, and the newer one, acme, includes the
more powerful features of sam (notably structural regular expressions
and the editing command structure) but is an environment
(with a significant nod to Oberon) that is closer in functionality
to emacs but with a different approach to integrating new functions
such as multi-file editing, mail, news, wiki, and other things.

it would be helpful if there were a more tutorial introduction to acme
i suppose, but have a look at the paper, not just the manual page.
similarly, what can be done with the Edit verb is probably not by
any means obvious, so it's not surprising you  concluded as you did.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[nigel]

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No. Plan 9 has a different approach to editing and
development environments, such that emacs and vi
are not a good fit.

You can check the following manual pages for details

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/acme
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/sam
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/emacs
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/vi

There are discussions at length in the mailing list archive
as to why such venerable editors are not used, and why
there is little motivation to use them, even less port them.

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist has links to all
the papers and the distribution itself.

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From: Blake McBride <blake@florida-software.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: [9fans] Emacs
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2002 09:06:20 GMT
Message-ID: <ufvdgrnd7on9a6@news.supernews.com>

Is there a version of (GNU or other) Emacs for Plan 9?
How about vi?

Thanks.

Blake McBride
blake@integra-online.com

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Blake McBride]

<nigel@9fs.org> wrote in message
news:b62213a9d106154c091c7e3ffdc6c552@9fs.org...
> No. Plan 9 has a different approach to editing and
> development environments, such that emacs and vi
> are not a good fit.
>
> You can check the following manual pages for details
>
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/acme
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/sam
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/emacs
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/vi
>
> There are discussions at length in the mailing list archive
> as to why such venerable editors are not used, and why
> there is little motivation to use them, even less port them.
>
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist has links to all
> the papers and the distribution itself.
>

What?  The vi & emacs pages say nothing of any use, sam is
a basic, raw text editor, and acme - see sam.  Little motivation?
I would think that having a full featured editor would be quite
appealing to a developer.  Not to be offensive, but sam seems
like notepad.  Surely you would agree that emacs is better than
notepad.

Anyway, I'm embarking on a project which only requires a
C compiler and an editor.  I thought I'd do it on Plan 9 but,
to be perfectly honest with you, I really have to have a powerful
editor in order to remain productive.

--blake

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Steve Kilbane]

> Anyway, I'm embarking on a project which only requires a
> C compiler and an editor.  I thought I'd do it on Plan 9 but,
> to be perfectly honest with you, I really have to have a powerful
> editor in order to remain productive.

I suspect you also have to have a powerful editor *that you're
familiar using*. Plan 9 is different from what you're used to,
so you can expect to dump that familiarity and clamber up the
learned curve first.

In some ways, arguing the differences here is like arguing the
differences between programming languages from different families.
You can do the same things with them, but you choose between them
because their different attributes suit your situation better.

"Better" is arguably subjective (as in, we'd probably get an
argument). Just stick with "different".

steve

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Don]

> What?  The vi & emacs pages say nothing of any use, sam is
> a basic, raw text editor, and acme - see sam.  Little motivation?
> I would think that having a full featured editor would be quite
> appealing to a developer.
>
Acme has everything I need and I'm more than ur avg developer ;)

> Not to be offensive, but sam seems
> like notepad.  Surely you would agree that emacs is better than
> notepad.
>
I would agree that emacs is better than notepad, but sam != notepad. U
would be wise to learn how acme/sam works before makin' this statement.
I've been developing my operating system in Acme and I love it. Not only
can I test all my code in my Autumn virtual machine directly in acme, but,
I can use plumbing to pipe information to/from acme windows thru the
virtual machine. Not only that, but, Acme has a great simplicity to it.
You can use any Acme win as a shell, directory browser, application win,
text editor, etc. Acme, in its simplistic splendor, is more than I ever
wanted in an editing environment. Sometimes the simple solution is, after
all, the best solution.

> Anyway, I'm embarking on a project which only requires a
> C compiler and an editor.  I thought I'd do it on Plan 9 but,
> to be perfectly honest with you, I really have to have a powerful
> editor in order to remain productive.
>
I think once you got used to using plan9's theory behind windowing you
would find plan9 is a prime environment for development. Not only do I
use plan9 to develop my OS in, but, I also use plan9 daily to audit
large projects like bind/apache and other operating system source code.
I've never been more happy with an editor. BTW, the Dump feature is
killer for projects spanning multiple days.

Hopefully, before you dismiss acme as a powerful editor you will continue
to research the reasoning and theory behind plan9 and acme? I realize it
is rather different style from traditional UNIX editing as well as the
Emacs style of editing, but, it is absolutely worth the little effort of
researching the theory. Didn't you have to learn about Emacs before you
were happy with its utilization and all the 'powerful' processing
techniques u employ? Same thing, bro.
Don

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Vladimir G. Ivanovic]

"n" == north  <Don> writes:

  n> Acme has everything I need and I'm more than ur avg developer ;)

Don,

There's something wrong with your keyboard. It's dropping characters.

--- Vladimir

--------
Vladimir G. Ivanovic                        http://leonora.org/~vladimir
2770 Cowper St.                                         vladimir@acm.org
Palo Alto, CA 94306-2447                                 +1 650 678 8014

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Don]

>> Acme has everything I need and I'm more than ur avg developer ;)
>
> There's something wrong with your keyboard. It's dropping characters.
>
Aww, don't hate just cz im arrogant ;)
Don
7f: Arrogance is bliss

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Blake McBride wrote:
> Anyway, I'm embarking on a project which only requires a
> C compiler and an editor.  I thought I'd do it on Plan 9 but,
> to be perfectly honest with you, I really have to have a powerful
> editor in order to remain productive.

If you need to work across several environments, X-Windows,
MS Windows, and Plan 9, I'd suggest "sam".  It is especially
good at making a slew of context-dependent changes simultaneously
in multiple files.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

nigel@9fs.org wrote:
> No. Plan 9 has a different approach to editing and
> development environments, such that emacs and vi
> are not a good fit.

Hey, EMACS provides a highly programmable environment that goes
way beyond simple editing tasks.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Blake McBride]

I think one of main problems is that, in spite of the fact that I
have a quality video board, Plan 9 comes up in a low
resolution.  It's so low that if I open up an RC window and
do a man on a command the text partially wraps and is difficult
to read.  If I could fix that problem I'd feel a lot better.

Things I commonly use in emacs:

intelligent Keyboard macros
intelligent auto indent
repeat command n number of times
Undo
Query replace
Scroll one line at a time (up or down)
Put current line at top of screen
Narrow region
Don't wrap lines on display
Push, pop, and remember locations
Assign blocks of text to registers (cut and paste more than one block)
Be able to switch back and forth between two buffers without having to
select it each time
Save ALL modified buffers command
Find matching paren, brace, etc.
Abbreviations

Can sam or acme do these?  I think these are powerful capabilities.
Surely I can write whatever I want in ed but these features make my
life a lot easier and more productive.

--------------
Download source code to my Dynace Object Oriented
Extension to C and Windows Development System from:
http://algorithms.us
Blake McBride (blake@algorithms.us)
Algorithms Corporation - 615-791-1636 - USA

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Quinn Dunkan]

> I think one of main problems is that, in spite of the fact that I
> have a quality video board, Plan 9 comes up in a low
> resolution.  It's so low that if I open up an RC window and
> do a man on a command the text partially wraps and is difficult
> to read.  If I could fix that problem I'd feel a lot better.

Posting about editors is not likely to get you much help on that one.

> Things I commonly use in emacs:

Most of these are directly supported.  One thing that I've been having fun with
in vim is text folding, but it's a toss up between that and opening another
window.

> Undo
> Query replace

Yes.

> Scroll one line at a time (up or down)
> Put current line at top of screen

Yes.  You can put any line at the top of the screen.

> Save ALL modified buffers command

Yes.

> Be able to switch back and forth between two buffers without having to
> select it each time

Yes.  Any more than two.

> Find matching paren, brace, etc.

Yes, by double clicking.

> intelligent Keyboard macros

You can perform an arbitrary transformation on any selected text with a click,
and you can assign arbitrary meaning to middle or right clicking on any text.
Not exactly the same, but it fills the same need for me.

> intelligent auto indent

The only place I find autoindent timesaving is lisp, and I can't really use
acme/wily for lisping.  Which is too bad since I'd prefer an acme style
inferior mode to ilisp or whatever.

> Narrow region

Not sure what this is.

> Assign blocks of text to registers (cut and paste more than one block)

acme makes it so easy to open more windows and to cut and paste, I've never
wanted this.

> repeat command n number of times

No, but that's what Edit is for.

> Don't wrap lines on display
> Push, pop, and remember locations
> Abbreviations

No, no, and no.  I use the second two in vim, but never missed any of them in
acme.  Pressing return every once and a while solves the first one, and right
clicking and plumbing mostly subsumes the second one.  Not using insanely
long identifiers helps with the last one.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Fariborz Tavakkolian]

Yes, select the area (by regexp, double-clicking just inside braces/brackets
or dragging the mouse etc.), then any action will just apply to that region.
It wont "hide" the content outside, but the selected area is highlighted. In
acme, for example:

Edit /^moo/,/^bar/ x/flerb/ c/floop/

At 10:13 AM 6/10/2002 -0700, Quinn Dunkan wrote:
>> Narrow region
>
>Not sure what this is.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[FJ Ballesteros]

As I said in a previous message, I think I could be considered as
an "advanced emacs user" (sic, don't blame me); but since I tried
acme I found that most of the things I was doing in a complex way with
emacs could be done in a much simpler way with tiny scripts and acme.

Why don't you just try it, until you learn how to use it well, and then
decide?


Blake McBride ha escrito:
>
> I think one of main problems is that, in spite of the fact that I
> have a quality video board, Plan 9 comes up in a low
> resolution.  It's so low that if I open up an RC window and
> do a man on a command the text partially wraps and is difficult
> to read.  If I could fix that problem I'd feel a lot better.
>
> Things I commonly use in emacs:
>
> intelligent Keyboard macros
> intelligent auto indent
> repeat command n number of times
> Undo
> Query replace
> Scroll one line at a time (up or down)
> Put current line at top of screen
> Narrow region
> Don't wrap lines on display
> Push, pop, and remember locations
> Assign blocks of text to registers (cut and paste more than one block)
> Be able to switch back and forth between two buffers without having to
> select it each time
> Save ALL modified buffers command
> Find matching paren, brace, etc.
> Abbreviations
>
> Can sam or acme do these?  I think these are powerful capabilities.
> Surely I can write whatever I want in ed but these features make my
> life a lot easier and more productive.
>
> --------------
> Download source code to my Dynace Object Oriented
> Extension to C and Windows Development System from:
> http://algorithms.us
> Blake McBride (blake@algorithms.us)
> Algorithms Corporation - 615-791-1636 - USA

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Don]

> I think one of main problems is that, in spite of the fact that I
> have a quality video board, Plan 9 comes up in a low
> resolution.  It's so low that if I open up an RC window and
> do a man on a command the text partially wraps and is difficult
> to read.  If I could fix that problem I'd feel a lot better.
>
Change ur font to a smaller font.
Don

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Blake McBride wrote:
> I think one of main problems is that, in spite of the fact that I
> have a quality video board, Plan 9 comes up in a low
> resolution.

That's configurable.

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Joel Salomon]

Blake McBride <blake@florida-software.com> wrote in message news:<ug9cjbrjn91kd0@news.supernews.com>...
<clip>

> Things I commonly use in emacs:
>
> intelligent Keyboard macros
> intelligent auto indent

<clip>
I'd settle for _dumb_ auto indent: when I type

int foo (char*** foo, Rune bar)
{
    first_line();

I want the next line to automatically
    start here,
not here.

This is a sensible default when programming, and makes it easy to
indent code for clarity. A single backspace override is easier to type
than 2 or 3 tabs before _every_ line. Shouldn't the editor promote the
use of the One True Brace Style ?

joel

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[James A. Robinson]

If you're happy with emacs, and think it is perfect for all your needs,
you probably won't instantly love sam or acme.  I used to love emacs,
but it got to the point where the joints in my fingers started to hurt
all the time.  I moved off emacs to wily (an acme pseudo clone) and then
to sam.

I've found sam very useful (and would probably find the new acme with it's
sam-like Edit function even more useful).  Most of what you list is not
built into either tool. No registers, no macros, etc. It certainly has a
powerful search/replace functionality (I think they are much nicer than
the regex search/replace in emacs), and the shell scripting functionality
with it's default selection/operation modes makes it all very powerful.

But still, if you've made up your mind in advance that the way emacs
does things is the best way for you, then you probably won't get much
out of the different models acme and sam offer.  They are different,
that's the best response I can think of to your question.


Jim

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Blake McBride]

Thank you all very much for all your input.  I was
able to adjust my monitor settings which made
looking at things a lot easier.

Although I received specific instructions on how to find
plan9.ini (thank you!), I already figured it out on my own last night.
While figuring it out I learned more about Plan 9 and had
a lot of fun.  I enjoy working with the system.

I appreciate all your input regarding acme and sam.  You
have convinced me to re-look at them with an open mind.

Instead of immediately starting on my big project, I have decided
to embark on a much smaller project using Plan 9.

Thanks again for all the help and encouragement.

Blake McBride

-------
Download source code to my Dynace Object Oriented
Extension to C and Windows Development System from:
http://algorithms.us
Blake McBride (blake@integra-online.com)
Algorithms Corporation - 615-791-1636 - USA

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Digby Tarvin]

Unfortunately, as you have discovered, porting of certain 'legacy'
applications to Plan9 (EMACS and X spring to mind) is more a religious than
a technical issue. Indeed, on this list Plan9 is closer to a religion that a
tool - and being a research system, I think a certain idealism on the part
of the developers is justified.

I have used ed, vi and emacs to roughly the same extent over the years,
and spent a bit of time learning sam and acme, neither of which I have had
an opportunity to really use except in my spare time, but I have learned
them well enough to be happy to use them for serious editing and development
if I had to.

They all have their advantages and disadvantages, and I often switch between
emacs and vi in a single editing session if something I want to do is
more easily done in the other editor.

If I had to characterise them briefly, I would say
 Ed was a very nice, consistent regular expression based line editor.
 vi is a bit of a schizophrenic combination of ed with a screen editor
 sam is a more consistent extension of ed to screen editing and WIMP
 emacs is a powerful but not easy to learn programmable keyboard based
  screen editor
 acme is emacs like, in the sense of attempting to be an all encompassing
  development environment, but better integrated with (but limited to) a
  WIMP environment.

I think the Plan9 offerings are elegant and powerful, but would still like
to have emacs or vi on the system for two reasons

1.  For a beginner, it is extremely frustrating trying to explore and configure
a system with an unfamiliar editor. When I first installed Plan9 (2nd Ed)
I found myself initially exporting a file system from Unix so that I could
go back to a Unix terminal when ever I needed to edit a file. I taught myself
to use SAM later, using a Unix resident version.

2.  There are times when a bitmapped display and a three button mouse are not
available, and it would be nice to have a fall back for use in these
circumstances. For instance, when using my laptop on a plane, I am stuck
with the internal two-button pointing device, and this seriously limits
the usability of acme.

I also think it would be a better advertisement for the new editors if
people adopted them voluntarily, rather than because nothing else is
available. But I suppose there is a fear some wouldn't bother learning the
new editors if a familiar one was available.

Regardless of technical merits, the most powerful editor, as with operating
systems, will always be the one you are most familiar with. It takes time
and effort to reach a point where you can make a fair comparison with a
new one.

All editors have their uses. There are times when ed is still my editor of
choice - for instance when I am telneting into a system in Australia and
getting equivalent to about 300 baud, with about 10 seconds between
hitting a key and seeing the character echoed. Microemacs is very
useful because it runs on the most diverse selection of operating.

I wouldn't expect or ask the Plan9 developers to spend time on such ports,
but if someone else decided to port emacs, I would certainly put a copy
on my system.

Regards,
DigbyT

> Thank you all very much for all your input.  I was
> able to adjust my monitor settings which made
> looking at things a lot easier.
>
> Although I received specific instructions on how to find
> plan9.ini (thank you!), I already figured it out on my own last night.
> While figuring it out I learned more about Plan 9 and had
> a lot of fun.  I enjoy working with the system.
>
> I appreciate all your input regarding acme and sam.  You
> have convinced me to re-look at them with an open mind.
>
> Instead of immediately starting on my big project, I have decided
> to embark on a much smaller project using Plan 9.
>
> Thanks again for all the help and encouragement.
>
> Blake McBride
>
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[James A. Robinson]

> 2.  There are times when a bitmapped display and a three button mouse are not
> available, and it would be nice to have a fall back for use in these
> circumstances. For instance, when using my laptop on a plane, I am stuck
> with the internal two-button pointing device, and this seriously limits
> the usability of acme.

Be sure to check out 'sam -d' as an alternative to ed. =)


Jim

Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Digby Tarvin]

>
> Be sure to check out 'sam -d' as an alternative to ed. =)
>
Oh yes - thanks. I had forgotten about that. I guess it would be a perfectly
acceptible command line fall back if I were more familiar with it.

It is indeed fine for getting configuration files setup during install, but
I think I would prefer vi or emacs as a development environment for
those times when I don't have a mouse...

Plus it is just close enough to ed to be confusing when used occasionally...

Regards,
DigbyT

P.S. For some reason I seem to have received three copies of my posting.
I don't think it was anything I did, but appologies if others also got
multiple copies...
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

[9fans] Emacs

[Blake McBride]

Is there a version of (GNU or other) Emacs for Plan 9?
How about vi?

Thanks.

Blake McBride
blake@integra-online.com