From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:40:08 -0800 From: "Roman V. Shaposhnik" In-reply-to: To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-id: <1233247208.4412.116.camel@goose.sun.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT References: Subject: Re: [9fans] Small program "PlanKey" (paraphrase of DOSKey) Topicbox-Message-UUID: 8e489a5c-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Thu, 2009-01-29 at 08:53 -0500, erik quanstrom wrote: > > > How about turning acme to universal UI, in the style of old Oberon? > > > > Acme very deeply believes that everything's just text. It would be > > substantial effort to get it to be any more universal than that. I'm > > aware of at least two independent efforts by very smart people who > > stalled at about the same place. > > i was hoping to avoid this discussion and keep things simple. > > the problem with adding graphics to acme is kind of interesting > though. text pretty much does it's own layout. You've hit the nail on the head with this comment. It seems that almost all layout systems spend 99% of their smarts laying out blocks of graphic information *and* trying to figure out how to make text be still "self-layingout". And I do mean all: from TeX, lout, all the way to HTML/CSS. If we were to learn from their experience I'd say it is a heck of a job to get it all right and still maintain your sanity. Thanks, Roman.