[9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

["Ethan A. Gardener" <eekee57@fastmail.fm>]

I just had to crop a bunch of images in the Gimp, and recalled how much I prefer doing it in Plan 9; it's so much less frustrating. In the Gimp, it's either a matter of estimating numbers (for a quick, casual job on visual media), or select, copy, paste into new window. In the latter case, when you save it, you have to find the directory and the file8749832710473name; not fun. Also, I'm not practised at this; I'm no good at cropping with my brain, so I had to zoom, resize the window, and select very carefully so selecting didn't move the image in the window.

In Plan 9, which isn't even made for the job, it's not without its frustrations, but it's got fewer of them than the Gimp. Open the image in page; use the plumber or otherwise enter the full path so you can copy/paste it later. Zoom and adjust the window as you like. In another window, grep for the filename (or the directory, or whatever,) in /dev/wsys/*/label, and type cd and send the directory part. (Of course, copy/paste or send the file name.) Then:
    crop -i 4 window | topng > path/filename.png
This is the part where you'll likely want to copy the full original path. That's one done. On to the next image, which presumably is open in the same instance of page so you don't have to cd or anything. `cat label` to get its full name and path. (It's possible only 9front's page puts the path in the label, I don't know.)

It's an operating system with few pretensions and only clunky image editing tools, versus a powerful two-decade-mature image editing suite. Loading and saving the files is no worse in Plan 9 than it is in the Gimp with its oh-so-modern file selector, and the actual cropping part is easier in Plan 9!


If anyone's waiting for news of my OS where everything is done from an interpreter prompt, I got distracted for a while but I'm on it again now. I'm staying with Forth but looking at alternatives to swap drop and roll -- I mean stack manipulation primitives. Not to start a discussion here, but I've decided it will have a single tree of names for all permanent storage despite supporting architectures without a filesystem. Disk blocks could be a directory of numbers under /b0, /b1 etc. OFW's non-volatile environment variables could be a single-level directory under /nv. Actual local filesystems, including the host's, could go under /f. Perhaps other resources could go in the same tree as virtual files, but I'm not building that bridge until I see the river. It's off topic for this list, so perhaps mail replies to me privately?

Any suggestions for a mailing list provider? My primary requirement is low maintenance. I see many projects use Google Groups, but would like suggestions for others if you have them.

--
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer