[9fans] Colors and other fun

[9fans] Colors and other fun

[pavlovetsky]

It has always been a great fun for me to use X Window System
resources, especially those related to colors. I studied rio(1) and
rio(4) and encountered a very very interesting things in control(2),
yet did not find a way to play with graphics above positioning. Does
colors really hardcoded in applications under Plan 9?

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Lucio De Re]

On Wed, 2007-06-27 at 09:37 +0000, pavlovetsky@gmail.com wrote:
> It has always been a great fun for me to use X Window System
> resources, especially those related to colors. I studied rio(1) and
> rio(4) and encountered a very very interesting things in control(2),
> yet did not find a way to play with graphics above positioning. Does
> colors really hardcoded in applications under Plan 9?

Yes.  You're approaching Plan 9 from an angle where it is particularly
recalcitrant, with good reason.  But explaining the details would take
those who know a lot of time and effort, so you may have to do a lot of
digging yourself.

Suffice it to say that in my experience no one is so unhappy with the
way Plan 9 imposes its way on the UI, specifically where colours are
concerned, to bother coding the endless flexibility that would be
required to address your preferences.

++L

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Rob Pike]

It's more than that. Philosophically, I believe the designer's goal involves
making decisions for the user. If the decisions are good, it's a good design
and the user is content.  I do not believe it's the designer's goal to defer
everything to the user.  As a bonus, making decisions early tends to
simplify the design. This is why there are no stty modes or resource
files in Plan 9.

And why there are no 'dot files', although that issue also involves the
avoidance of dot files filling up your home directory silently and slowing
down every command that reads the most important directory in your
world for the sake of customizability. A $USER/lib directory is a
much sounder place to put such things.

On a related note, I see no merit whatsoever in separating 'mechanism'
from 'policy'. If the best design involves conflating them, go for it.

-rob

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Bakul Shah]

> It's more than that. Philosophically, I believe the designer's goal involves
> making decisions for the user. If the decisions are good, it's a good design
> and the user is content.  I do not believe it's the designer's goal to defer
> everything to the user.  As a bonus, making decisions early tends to
> simplify the design. This is why there are no stty modes or resource
> files in Plan 9.
>
> And why there are no 'dot files', although that issue also involves the
> avoidance of dot files filling up your home directory silently and slowing
> down every command that reads the most important directory in your
> world for the sake of customizability. A $USER/lib directory is a
> much sounder place to put such things.
>
> On a related note, I see no merit whatsoever in separating 'mechanism'
> from 'policy'. If the best design involves conflating them, go for it.
>
> -rob

Since you bring up design issues I have to ask! Plan9
graphics are limited to 2D and I have long wondered if
stopping there was by design (and lack of need) or because
you couldn't come up with a satisfactory 3D design.  In any
case, how you would you go about designing a 3D graphics
system?  Discussing ideas you have considered and thrown away
or ideas you have mused about but not taken further would be
quite interesting (at least to me).  Thanks!

-- bakul

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Kris Maglione]

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On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 11:26:21AM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
>Since you bring up design issues I have to ask! Plan9
>graphics are limited to 2D and I have long wondered if
>stopping there was by design (and lack of need) or because
>you couldn't come up with a satisfactory 3D design.  In any
>case, how you would you go about designing a 3D graphics
>system?  Discussing ideas you have considered and thrown away
>or ideas you have mused about but not taken further would be
>quite interesting (at least to me).  Thanks!

By 3D design, do you mean 3D widgets? You might note that most 
Plan 9 apps don't use widget toolkits (although libframe is sort 
of like one), but libpanel (by Tom Duff, used by mothra) uses 3D 
widgets, as does Inferno's Tk (although both are ugly by most 
standards; I'm no fan).

Although I'd be interested in hearing the rationale for not 
using 3d widgets in the Plan 9 UI, my rationale is that it's 
just not necessary. I don't even find 3D widgets particularly 
pleasant. It's interesting to note that most Web2-ish UIs don't 
use much in the way of 3D effects. All that being said, 3D UIs 
are very hard to get right. Most free 3D toolkits appear rather 
crude, with ones like Tk and Xforms being positively ugly. The 
same can be said of most commercial ones. UIs like Cocoa, Qt, and 
GTK have had a lot of effort put into them by artists, not 
programmers, in recent years. If compared to them, most people 
who would like 3D UIs would balk at anything less. Those who can 
do without them tend not to relish the overhead, or to 
particularly enjoy the effect.

-- 
Kris Maglione

The speed of an oncoming vehicle is directly proportional
to the length of the passing zone.

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Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Bakul Shah]

> By 3D design, do you mean 3D widgets? You might note that most
> Plan 9 apps don't use widget toolkits (although libframe is sort
> of like one), but libpanel (by Tom Duff, used by mothra) uses 3D
> widgets, as does Inferno's Tk (although both are ugly by most
> standards; I'm no fan).

I don't mean 3D widgets in particular.  I don't even like the
word widget.  If they'd called it a gizmo it might have
evolved differently....

I am not sure what I mean :-)  Guess some sort of 3D UI.  A
way to deal with 3d objects.  Things like Cocoa's (x)(-)(+)
3d buttons are pretty silly and you don't lose anything by
flattening them.  Eyecandy is not what I mean.  To me design
is more about function, not just making things non-ugly.

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[David Leimbach]

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On 6/27/07, Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com> wrote:
>
> > By 3D design, do you mean 3D widgets? You might note that most
> > Plan 9 apps don't use widget toolkits (although libframe is sort
> > of like one), but libpanel (by Tom Duff, used by mothra) uses 3D
> > widgets, as does Inferno's Tk (although both are ugly by most
> > standards; I'm no fan).
>
> I don't mean 3D widgets in particular.  I don't even like the
> word widget.  If they'd called it a gizmo it might have
> evolved differently....
>
> I am not sure what I mean :-)  Guess some sort of 3D UI.  A
> way to deal with 3d objects.  Things like Cocoa's (x)(-)(+)
> 3d buttons are pretty silly and you don't lose anything by
> flattening them.  Eyecandy is not what I mean.  To me design
> is more about function, not just making things non-ugly.
>

What's more usable about 3d than 2d for a GUI desktop?
Apple spent a long time implementing overlapping windows for their first
GUIs they were copying from Xerox... except that Xerox didn't have
overlapping windows.  They made their work much harder for themselves.

Now consider Acme... Windows aren't overlapped, they're tiled, you can hide
windows but then you can also find them again.  Kind of nice and efficient.

If I didn't have overlapping windows, Expose on Mac OS X would be much less
interesting now wouldn't it?

It's a shame when a new feature requires a new feature to use that new
feature.

What's the point?  Job security?

I use Acme on Mac OS X as my main editor for most things these days
actually.  The only things I really miss are when I'm editing scheme or lisp
and need to match up all those damned parenthesis.  In those cases I use
Emacs... it's just better at it (and no stopping to click to highlight
open/close parens doesn't do it for me as much as automatic code indentation
based on syntax gets me)

I've honestly also not really tried to figure out if Acme's minimal
auto-indenting can help me with this.

Dave

Dave

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Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Gabriel Diaz]

hello

i see the point of 3d when doing tools for visualizing representation
of things that should be moved live like a car model, or a building
plant or quake. May be he is speaking about this? something like
opengl or directx :-?

slds.

gabi


On 6/27/07, David Leimbach <leimy2k@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 6/27/07, Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com> wrote:
> > > By 3D design, do you mean 3D widgets? You might note that most
> > > Plan 9 apps don't use widget toolkits (although libframe is sort
> > > of like one), but libpanel (by Tom Duff, used by mothra) uses 3D
> > > widgets, as does Inferno's Tk (although both are ugly by most
> > > standards; I'm no fan).
> >
> > I don't mean 3D widgets in particular.  I don't even like the
> > word widget.  If they'd called it a gizmo it might have
> > evolved differently....
> >
> > I am not sure what I mean :-)  Guess some sort of 3D UI.  A
> > way to deal with 3d objects.  Things like Cocoa's (x)(-)(+)
> > 3d buttons are pretty silly and you don't lose anything by
> > flattening them.  Eyecandy is not what I mean.  To me design
> > is more about function, not just making things non-ugly.
> >
>
> What's more usable about 3d than 2d for a GUI desktop?
>
>
> Apple spent a long time implementing overlapping windows for their first
> GUIs they were copying from Xerox... except that Xerox didn't have
> overlapping windows.  They made their work much harder for themselves.
>
> Now consider Acme... Windows aren't overlapped, they're tiled, you can hide
> windows but then you can also find them again.  Kind of nice and efficient.
>
> If I didn't have overlapping windows, Expose on Mac OS X would be much less
> interesting now wouldn't it?
>
>  It's a shame when a new feature requires a new feature to use that new
> feature.
>
> What's the point?  Job security?
>
>
> I use Acme on Mac OS X as my main editor for most things these days
> actually.  The only things I really miss are when I'm editing scheme or lisp
> and need to match up all those damned parenthesis.  In those cases I use
> Emacs... it's just better at it (and no stopping to click to highlight
> open/close parens doesn't do it for me as much as automatic code indentation
> based on syntax gets me)
>
> I've honestly also not really tried to figure out if Acme's minimal
> auto-indenting can help me with this.
>
>
> Dave
>
> Dave

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Bakul Shah]

> i see the point of 3d when doing tools for visualizing representation
> of things that should be moved live like a car model, or a building
> plant or quake. May be he is speaking about this? something like
> opengl or directx :-?

Consider for example google earth or a CAD program -- if you
ever played with revit you'd realize just how clunky Autocad
is.  Consider 3d video games.  Consider something like a
flight simulator -- all the one I played with were very
clunky to interact with.  Can we do something to make it easy
to visualize complex information in a virtual 3d space and
navigate around it or modify it?  Can there be an interface
for a sculptor to model something he wishes to build?  Why
must such things be separate "applications"?  Why can't we
just treat each "window" as a piece of paper and shuffle it
around, bend a corner, crumple it up, stretch it out, do some
origami with?

Take my question in whichever direction you want.
Some times misunderstanding leads to invention!

> > What's more usable about 3d than 2d for a GUI desktop?

Turn your question around.  If you had a 3d UI what useful
(or playful) things can you do that you can't do today?  If
you come up with something you'd want to do, what else can be
added/changed/removed to make the UI simpler and more useful?

> > I use Acme on Mac OS X as my main editor for most things these days
> > actually.  The only things I really miss are when I'm editing scheme or lis
> p
> > and need to match up all those damned parenthesis.  In those cases I use
> > Emacs... it's just better at it (and no stopping to click to highlight
> > open/close parens doesn't do it for me as much as automatic code indentatio
> n
> > based on syntax gets me)

Do you write any haskell/python in acme?

If the editor showed each s-expr at a different height &
color and if you could look at your program from a 45 angle,
you'd see what's what :-)

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Jack Johnson]

On 6/27/07, Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com> wrote:
> must such things be separate "applications"?  Why can't we
> just treat each "window" as a piece of paper and shuffle it
> around, bend a corner, crumple it up, stretch it out, do some
> origami with?

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/131

-Jack

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Bakul Shah]

> > must such things be separate "applications"?  Why can't we
> > just treat each "window" as a piece of paper and shuffle it
> > around, bend a corner, crumple it up, stretch it out, do some
> > origami with?
>
> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/131

Thanks for an interesting link.  For some more details see:

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ&mode=related&search=

And after that you must watch this one:

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=kQL9V2dnKFY

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

The new o/mero has expose :) (not kidding).
The 90% times I use overlapping windows is just to switch between some windows
that I want to have most of screen space (while used).

Despite being a mosaic (instead of windows), I still would like to
pick one window, zoom it
so that it gets more screen space, and then zoom out to get the screen
as it was.


On 6/27/07, David Leimbach <leimy2k@gmail.com> wrote:

> Now consider Acme... Windows aren't overlapped, they're tiled, you can hide
> windows but then you can also find them again.  Kind of nice and efficient.
>
> If I didn't have overlapping windows, Expose on Mac OS X would be much less
> interesting now wouldn't it?
>

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Jack Johnson]

On 6/27/07, Francisco J Ballesteros <nemo@lsub.org> wrote:
> The 90% times I use overlapping windows is just to switch between some windows
> that I want to have most of screen space (while used).
>
> Despite being a mosaic (instead of windows), I still would like to
> pick one window, zoom it  so that it gets more screen space, and
> then zoom out to get the screen as it was.

I'm a Mac user, and my regular machine is a 12" iBook.  Everyone asks
how I survive with such a small screen, and my answer is Expose.

My real desk is messy.  My windowspace is messy.  But, with my
windowspace I have a hot corner: the upper right activates Expose
across all applications.  I throw the cursor up to the corner, pick my
nearly full-screen window by it's content from among the choices, and
keep going.  One mouse move and one click.

I used to think virtual Post-It notes were idiotic.  Now I love them.
I have a dozen on my virtual desk, never lose any, can instantly see
all of them simultaneously and just as instantly obscure them all when
my locus of attention changes.

Though options like the Windows taskbar or the rio menu exist, picking
a window from its visual cues seems to be faster than making the
(quick) context switch from working to reading the window titles to
working again.    Even with terminal windows the context of it's last
state gives me instant clues as to its content, where the name of the
window provides little.

I also find that, like the tiled window scenario, I rarely resize my
windows anymore.  Expose made the iffy idea of overlapping windows
much more efficient.

All still relatively 2D.  There's a lot left to explore before we
start adding dimensions for the gloss.  I still believe a tiled
workspace is superior, but who says we can't naturalize or optimize
the use of that space?  The acme-inspired larswm has a feature where
you can swap windows in the tiled space, so you can have a relatively
large workpane and swap in your current window/task without hiding
your current task.  Without better cues (and here, I suppose animation
would work, but who wants the overhead) the result is functional but a
little jarring.  Also, there are times when the other columns don't
help you with the task at hand, and it would be nice to have them
easily adapt to your current needs.

Francisco's workflow of wanting or needing to maximize the use of the
available pixels for the task at hand is a common one, and somewhere
out there is likely a great solution for incorporating that workflow
style in a tiled environment (namely acme).  In the past, both with
Oberon and with acme I found myself vertically expanding workspaces in
a larger left-hand pane and keeping the right-hand column for
text/tools/scratchpads/commands, but depending on the stacking of the
left-hand workspaces changing context between tasks could be
cumbersome.

Acme-addicts, what's your workflow like?  How many of you are on
pixel-challenged monitors?

-Jack

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

"Bakul Shah" <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com> wrote in message 
news:20070627190951.73A8B5B3B@mail.bitblocks.com...
> I am not sure what I mean :-)  Guess some sort of 3D UI.  A
> way to deal with 3d objects.  ...

You need to distinguish between a genuine 3D display, which is extremely 
rare,
a stereoscopic display, which is not as rare (I have played Tomb Raider on a 
PC in stereo),
and a 3D *model* rendered in 2D, which is pretty common these days.

3D rendering is computationally intensive, and in modern times it is usually
done by sending the model to a so-called 3D graphics card along with
lighting and viewing parameters; updating just the viewing parameters
is sufficient to view a static model from all aspects.  For 3D games a
lot of compromises are made in order to be able to supply new model
information at a good frame rate as the modeled objects move in real time.

You might look into free 3D rendering software such as the POV ray-tracer
or the BRL-CAD package (on SourceForge I believe), which I contributed
to in its early days.  These provide modeling and viewing tools, and in the
case of BRL-CAD there are programming library facilities for interrogating
the model geometry, for applications like ballistic vulnerability studies.
*Maybe* these could be ported to Plan 9; I suspect APE would be helpful.
If there is an X-Windows server for Plan 9 it might not be too hard.

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Anant Narayanan]

On 27-Jun-07, at 8:37 PM, Rob Pike wrote:
> It's more than that. Philosophically, I believe the designer's goal
> involves
> making decisions for the user. If the decisions are good, it's a
> good design
> and the user is content.  I do not believe it's the designer's goal
> to defer
> everything to the user.  As a bonus, making decisions early tends to
> simplify the design. This is why there are no stty modes or resource
> files in Plan 9.

That decision would depend entirely on whom you are making the
software for. You can't possibly decide for a large majority of the
people in the world, considering they are all different with
different perceptions of what works the best for them. On the other
hand, if you're making software for a bunch of your friends with
similar tastes, that approach would work (Wasn't that how Acme/Rio
started out anyway?)

That being said, overwhelming the user with all kinds of options is
harmful, no doubt. A ready-to-go application, but with the ability to
configure it all you like - for those who want customization - seems
to be a good balance. I see no harm in giving options to those who
need them while hiding them from those who don't.

--
Anant

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[andrey mirtchovski]

> That decision would depend entirely on whom you are making the
> software for. You can't possibly decide for a large majority of the
> people in the world, considering they are all different with
> different perceptions of what works the best for them.

you can if what you're designing is different enough that it'll
require them to learn it. case in point: the iPhone.

we're much better at learning than we are at forgetting.

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Dave Eckhardt]

For years I thought I had an idiosyncratic visual problem with
mostly-white or mostly-light displays--headaches, loss of mental
focus, etc.  I used X's (horrible) preference "system" to set my
world to black backgrounds.  I had trouble using rio for long
periods of time and thought about building my own with different
colors.

Now it turns out that the "display brightness" problem I had was
limited to CRT's, so maybe it was a flicker artifact.  Due to
years of habit I prefer dark-background displays, but I'm also
giving rio's color scheme a chance to convert me.

Dave Eckhardt

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[andrey mirtchovski]

colors are hardcoded for applications, however there's a small
loophole you can use on 8-bpp displays to get something that is
almost, but not quite, entirely unlike X's resources.

the 'getmap' command will let you change to a different colormap from
the default. pre-defined cmaps are in /lib/cmap. from the
documentation:

          On 8-bit color-mapped displays, getmap loads the display's
          color map (default rgbv).  The named colormap can be a file
          in the current directory or in the standard repository
          /lib/cmap.  It can also be a string of the form gamma or
          gammaN, where N is a floating point value for the gamma,
          defining the contrast for a monochrome map.  Similarly,
          rgamma and rgammaN define a reverse-video monochrome map.
          Finally, the names screen or display or vga are taken as
          synonyms for the current color map stored in the display
          hardware.

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Lorenzo Fernando Bivens de la Fuente]

I like hardcoded colours.
I like them because they add consistency to the whole enviroment. For
almost all plan 9 applications you know that "green" means menu or
action, light yellow is somewhere to write, etc...

Sadly some apps have been developed without following that "colour
standard". It would be very good from a "usability pov" (please, don't
flame me on that) to establish the meaning of each colour. Then we
should forget about "colours" and start thinking about the meaning of
whatever we  want to show.

There is only one thing that perhaps could allow in my humble opinion
some change.... And it is the wallpaper colour. (I love wallpaper
patterns ;) Not photos or drawings, but tesselations and other
patterns).  We could perhaps use the wallpaper color to mean
"something"... Just a couple of thoughts.

The good thing here is that anyone can get it in any flavour...
(Lucuma yogurt for me, please)

Cheers!

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Steve Simon]

Ok,

My 2¢ worth.

I changed the selected text colour in sam to a darker grey-green,
by editing the source. In my defence the default colour is almost
invisible on my laptops LCD display.

-Steve

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[erik quanstrom]

it sounds like you want γ correction to accommodate your hardware's
quirks, not a different color in sam.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Rob Pike]

On 6/27/07, erik quanstrom <quanstro@coraid.com> wrote:
> it sounds like you want γ correction to accommodate your hardware's
> quirks, not a different color in sam.
>
> - erik
>

yes. if you can't distinguish the colors it's because the monitor's
not set right.
they're quite distinct in all respects - and i'm fairly colorblind so
i know they
work well in the face of that issue.

-rob

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Steve Simon]

> it sounds like you want γ correction to accommodate your hardware's
> quirks, not a different color in sam.

Yep, good call.

My other thought was that it might be some unfortunate
interaction between quantization in plan9's colourmap
(I can only run 8 bit accelerated) and the colours of the
primaries in my lcd; its rather old, though I have no
idea if lcds age like crts.

-Steve

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Kris Maglione]

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On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 06:55:45PM +0100, Steve Simon wrote:
>I changed the selected text colour in sam to a darker grey-green,
>by editing the source. In my defence the default colour is almost
>invisible on my laptops LCD display.

I don't see why you'd need a defense. If the color scheme is 
making it harder to do your work, then I don't see how you could 
be denounced for changing it. I, personally, have a hard time 
distinguishing the background color of the selected text in 
acme, possibly because I'm color blind. I sometimes have to get 
close to the screen and squint when matching parens and braces. 
I should change it.

But that's really pretty minor. When I sit in front of a foreign 
linux box and type ls, I usually get a listing in harsh colors, 
some of which I need to get closer to the screen and squint just 
to make out words. It seems that whenever I see a screenshot of 
a curses app, there are bright and harsh colors, usually blues 
and reds, and I'm astounded that people can tolerate looking at 
them for hours.

That's my only motivation for changing X resources. Plan 9's 
color scheme, on the other hand, is generally agreeable, and 
I've never really felt much desire to meddle with it.

-- 
Kris Maglione

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires
a computer.

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Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Russ Cox]

Vim ships with a file quotes.txt containing testimonials.  This is my favorite:

  I typed :set all and the screen FILLED up with options.  A whole screen of
  things to be set and unset.  I saw some of my old friends like wrapmargin,
  modelines and showmode, but the screen was FILLED with new friends!   I love
  them all!   I love VIM!   I'm so happy that I've found this editor!  I feel
  like how I once felt when I started using vi after a couple of years of using
  ed.  I never thought I'd forsake my beloved ed, but vi ... oh god, vi was
  great.  And now, VIM.  (Peter Jay Salzman, USA)

Russ

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Tim Wiess]

> Vim ships with a file quotes.txt containing testimonials.  This is my favorite:
>
>   I typed :set all and the screen FILLED up with options.  A whole screen of
>   things to be set and unset.  I saw some of my old friends like wrapmargin,
>   modelines and showmode, but the screen was FILLED with new friends!   I love
>   them all!   I love VIM!   I'm so happy that I've found this editor!  I feel
>   like how I once felt when I started using vi after a couple of years of using
>   ed.  I never thought I'd forsake my beloved ed, but vi ... oh god, vi was
>   great.  And now, VIM.  (Peter Jay Salzman, USA)

    heh... nice.

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Charles Forsyth]

>   I typed :set all and the screen FILLED up with options.  A whole screen of
>   things to be set and unset.

Tinkering. No one thinks big of you.

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[john]

>>   I typed :set all and the screen FILLED up with options.  A whole screen of
>>   things to be set and unset.
>
> Tinkering. No one thinks big of you.

Options considered harmful. The ability to set up your applications the
way you like them is dangerously UNIX-like and must be avoided. The
Holy Code of the Sacred Developers contain the hard-coded Values that
lead to True Enlightenment.


John

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[erik quanstrom]

> The Holy Code of the Sacred Developers contain the hard-coded Values that
> lead to True Enlightenment.

you say this with sarcasm.  but i think there's some truth to it.
hard-coded Values are ones you don't need to think about.

my first reaction to russ' note was that vim hasn't so much provided
an editor, but an editor development platform for people who don't
want to start from scratch.

you wouldn't put up with a car that had 1000 options that needed
configuring before you could comfortably go down the road.  why
put up with it in software?

if you still really want it just the way you want it, write
your own.  fidding options doesn't count among the Holy Code,
as you likely want the one feature they don't have.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[john]

> you wouldn't put up with a car that had 1000 options that needed
> configuring before you could comfortably go down the road.  why
> put up with it in software?
>

So it's better to use an editor which *doesn't* allow you to configure
it at all than to use one which lets you set every detail? Last time
I checked, I could start up vi and get to work, without needing to
set 1000 options. I wouldn't do such a thing, because I use emacs,
but you get my drift. (vi isn't comfortable no matter how many
options you set)

To continue with the analogy--why are so many computer analogies
about cars, and why are they so bad?--vi is more like a car where
you can give yourself automatic windows at a whim, change the
body color, swap out seats, change the steering wheel to a fighter
jet stick, or hang fluffy dice in the windows. A more suitable
analogy for acme would be a seat in an airliner. You get a seat,
it's pretty comfortable, you can do a few things, but your
environment is irrevocably set as the inside of a 737, in a blue seat,
with a screaming kid next to you.
(does the screaming kid represent uriel? Let's not go too deep).

That said, I'm writing this email from acme. It grows on you. I'm pretty
happy with it in most cases. I just have a strong desire to be able to
customize *something*; maybe it gives me the illusion of power.

Sometimes (all times) it's more fun to troll than to work.


John

Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Kris Maglione]

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On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 05:56:46PM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
>my first reaction to russ' note was that vim hasn't so much provided
>an editor, but an editor development platform for people who don't
>want to start from scratch.

You're thinking of Emacs. Vim, internally and externally, is a 
monolithic mess (I'm no Emacs appologist, by the way). It's got 
scripting languages and knobs and bells and whistles and chimes 
and thorns cyanide. But it's not a platform. It's an editor that 
you can try to mangle to behave in ways it normally wouldn't. 
Emacs, though, is an OS, which has some editor functionality. 
It's a platform on which to build an editor. It's also large, 
complex, and beyond my ability to wield.

-- 
Kris Maglione

Any line, however short, is still too long.

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Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

[Markus Sonderegger]

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> Vim ships with a file quotes.txt containing testimonials.  This is my favorite:

>   I typed :set all and the screen FILLED up with options.  A whole screen of
>   things to be set and unset.  I saw some of my old friends like wrapmargin,
>   modelines and showmode, but the screen was FILLED with new friends!   I love
>   them all!   I love VIM!   I'm so happy that I've found this editor!  I feel
>   like how I once felt when I started using vi after a couple of years of using
>   ed.  I never thought I'd forsake my beloved ed, but vi ... oh god, vi was
>   great.  And now, VIM.  (Peter Jay Salzman, USA)

Haha, and after hours of configuring its nearly useable!

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From: "Russ Cox" <rsc@swtch.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:59:22 -0400
Message-ID: <20070627185931.C7F201E8C22@holo.morphisms.net>

Vim ships with a file quotes.txt containing testimonials.  This is my favorite:

  I typed :set all and the screen FILLED up with options.  A whole screen of
  things to be set and unset.  I saw some of my old friends like wrapmargin,
  modelines and showmode, but the screen was FILLED with new friends!   I love
  them all!   I love VIM!   I'm so happy that I've found this editor!  I feel
  like how I once felt when I started using vi after a couple of years of using
  ed.  I never thought I'd forsake my beloved ed, but vi ... oh god, vi was
  great.  And now, VIM.  (Peter Jay Salzman, USA)

Russ