From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Getting started in Plan9 - help
From: anothy@cosym.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-Id: <20020121221520.88DFF199E3@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 17:15:15 -0500
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 401a8804-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

// ...i cant seem to be able to change it...

in my experience (always?), aux/vga is unable to change the
resolution of a display once it's first been brought up. to get
your display to boot in a different resolution, change the
definition of vgasize in plan9.ini (which generally lives in a
FAT partition or on a floppy; more on that in a minute).

Acessibility:

Plan 9 does not include a web browser or other html
interpreter; look to Vita Nuova's freely-available Inferno
distribution, which includes Charon.

man dossrv(4) for a description of the a:, c:, and 9fat:
scripts which will facilitate, respectivly, access to a floppy
drive, your primary FAT partition, and your plan9 FAT
partition, where configuration information like plan9.ini
is commonly stored.

for example, to edit my plan9.ini, i do this:
	9fat:
	acme -c1 /n/9fat/plan9.ini
	unmount /n/9fat

Shell:

to find a file named "myfile" in /usr/anothy, i do:
	`{du -a /usr/anothy | awk '{print $2}'} | grep myfile
this sort of construction works well for all manner of
tools (although i have on occasion missed find's easy
methods of finding files based on greater/less-than
comparisons). also try
	grep some_string `{du -a /usr/anothy | awk '{print $2}'}
for finding "some_string" in a set of files.

rc has no command completion or history. the design
rational is essentially that this functionality properly
belongs in the windowing system, not the shell, so that
the solution becomes general: it can be applied to every
program that looks for input. while not having history
(and to a lesser extent command completion) took me a
bit of getting used to comming from unix, i do not miss
it, and now strongly prefer the Plan 9 way of giving me
such things.

Keys:

plan 9 terminals are much more mouse-driven than
unix terminals. the current UI basically mandates that
you become comfortable using the mouse alot. the end
result is a much more efficient system - the mouse is
much better at many tasks than moving things around
with a keyboard, even when it doesn't feel like it (there
was a good report on this linked here earlier, but i failed
to make a note of it; anyone?). this is not always true
(folks with various disabilities or motor imparment
being the primary counter-example), but is true the
overwhelming majority of the time, and the system is
designed with that in mind.

the interupt functionality could be moved off del, and
onto something else, like the pause/break key. but
keyboards vary widely, and a replacement would have
to be well-chosen. on most smaller keyboards (like on
laptops), del is a key, while pause/break is often a
pseudo-key.

also, as noted earlier, it's not at all clear what the
"conventional" functionality of del is. on most of my
Unix systems, it produces ^? - far less useful than the
interupt function.

General:

i'm not sure what you're asking WRT plan9 default
boot being "safe" for other OSes. the bootloader plan
9 will install is not a multi-booter - it only finds the
first partition marked "active" (or can there only ever
be one?) and runs that. it will not, however, touch
any data living on other partitions.

there has been wide speculation on why Plan 9 has
not gained greater support than it has. ideas on
this topic vary widely. my own theory is something
along the lines of plan 9 is just too much: it requires
people to understand (or be willing to learn) many
new concepts all at once to really "get it". others
believe it has something to do with licensing terms,
or the attitude of people on 9fans and comp.os.plan9.
there's also the old chicken-and-egg problem: users
aren't interested because of the comparitave lack of
apps, and app developers arn't interested because of
the lack of users. but that's all just speculation.
ア