From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:07:19 PDT." <7359f0490706270807ia34da8bl408c6042474637b4@mail.gmail.com> From: Bakul Shah Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 11:26:21 -0700 Message-Id: <20070627182621.C14B05B3B@mail.bitblocks.com> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 8868cd98-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > 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