[9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[Joel Salomon]

The manual description appears the same. *gonk*
Next time I look first.

Are there other old old programs that have been updated and renamed? And
are there non-ported programs I can cut my teeth on?

Thanks,
--Joel
______________________________________________________
Due to economic circumstances, the light at the end of
the tunnel has been turned off.

Re: [9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[andrey mirtchovski]

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002, Joel Salomon wrote:

> Are there other old old programs that have been updated and renamed? And
> are there non-ported programs I can cut my teeth on?
>

long before I ever heard of Plan 9, it supposedly had an X server ported to
it. ie you could run your X programs and have them display in a Plan 9
window.

this port has long disappeared, though i remember seeing 'x.tar.gz' once
in 2000 on the bell-labs anonymous ftp server.

there are also programs mentioned in the papers and man pages that only
exist (or have existed) internally, or at times there have been man pages
for stuff that didn't appear outside bell-labs' computers, but that's more for
the conspiracy-type people :)

andrey

Re: [9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[Russ Cox]

> C++ compiler

you don't want the cfront-based C++ compiler
we used to use.  it's not the C++ you expect.

and you've got gcc if you really want.

> panel library (graphics)

/n/sources/contrib/mothra/libpanel/

> native port of limbo's Tk library (was this the same thing as the panel library?)

no, it was different.  i did this but it was big and clunky.
it doesn't appear to have made it off my local system
onto emelie, at least not in the form that actually compiled.
maybe i have it on a backup cd somewhere.

libcontrol is supposed to fill the same need, but i think
the lack of automatic geometry really hurts it.  if you're
interested in having a Tk-like library, maybe the best
thing to do is build an auto-packer and a nice limbo/tk-like
interface on top of libcontrol.

> native port of charon web browser

this is /n/sources/contrib/i

Re: [9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[kjn9]

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Date: 16 Nov 2002 15:50:54 -0000

There's a lot of stuff that is either documented, or is rumoured to have existed, but is not in the 4th Edition, probably for sound reasons:

alef
C++ compiler
X server
panel library (graphics)
native port of limbo's Tk library (was this the same thing as the panel library?)
native port of charon web browser

Some of these would help attract a bigger community, by allowing a larger range of applications to be ported to Plan 9.  The most useful in this regard would of course be the X server - but perhaps X11 is too large to port from the 2nd edition and to maintain (as well as not doing things the "Plan9 way").

Tk is a small widget library that would be very useful, because it is still the most popular widget set for perl, python, and tcl.  This would give us access to a huge number of graphical scripts (and an incentive to port tcl), and reduce the Plan 9 learning curve for a large number of Unix developers.

Re: [9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[a]

// ...non-ported programs i can cut my teeth on?

pretty much the only things i miss from 2e are the old fb
suite of graphics operators. they were *really* nice for
doing batch or scripted operations - in my opinion, much
nicer than anything else i've found (i can do it all with
ImageMagik, for example, but it's much more awkward),
and generally much smaller to boot. the only downside of
the programs was that they all operated on only the plan9
image format - but that wasn't much of a big deal - just
stick a converter on either end of the pipeline. the
programs were never ported to 3e (although some existed
internally with brazil's graphics model), and i don't
exactly remember whether the ones that were ported inside
ever dealt with the changes russ made to get better color
depths. the biggest problem (but perhaps the easiest to
solve) is that i don't think the source was ever released
under the new license. any chance of putting it in the
contrib section? i'd be willing (eager!) to help on this
as well, if we could get the old stuff out under the new
license. any chance?
ア

Re: [9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[Dan Cross]

> he said he wanted to cut his teeth on something, not break them.

This raises the question: Isn't cutting teeth just a controlled form
of breaking them?

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[Russ Cox]

> long before I ever heard of Plan 9, it supposedly had an X server ported to
> it. ie you could run your X programs and have them display in a Plan 9
> window.

he said he wanted to cut his teeth on something, not break them.

Re: [9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[Russ Cox]

> Are there other old old programs that have been updated and renamed? And
> are there non-ported programs I can cut my teeth on?

it wasn't updated and renamed.
they're different programs, of different
lineages.  drawterm originally ran under
windows.  x support came later.

Re: [9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[Russ Cox]

umm, i think what 9x did, drawterm does.
/sys/src/cmd/unix/drawterm.
though maybe i'm reading the description
backwards.

[9fans] 9x and similar old apps

[Joel Salomon]

Archeological diging on the 9fans archive turned up a program by the name
of 9x which would "provide a remote graphical connection
to a Plan 9 machine on an X terminal". I had contemplated writing such a
program as an exercize is 9P etc. Is any of the old code still available?
Are there other "gems" like this floating around?

--Joel
______________________________________________________
Due to economic circumstances, the light at the end of
the tunnel has been turned off.