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From: Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] problem with acme on 9front
Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 17:51:44 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20160519215144.GG22691@wopr> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAOw7k5jRM7uvk=Mk0EV3B2y2HsO=1gmM+ZtEj1CB1tznpGWNMA@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 08:42:54PM +0100, Charles Forsyth wrote:
>
> Any experienced acme user will quickly start banging the desk in
> frustration if thrown back into sam.
> Incredibly clumsy by comparison; not fluid. sam -d is useful for certain
> types of scripting.

This is tantamount to saying acme is superior because you are better at
acme.  While this is a valid method of choosing the tools you personally
use, it's not much good to people who are trying to figure out how these
sorts of opinions get formed in the first place.

Sam is a legitimate step forward in the world of text editing; its
command language and approach to regex is very powerful and allows
interesting applications.  Samterm has quirks and things that need
fixing -- its scrolling mechanism has been suggested for use as a csprng
-- but there's always the ability to fix or replace the interface.  With
acme, there is nothing *but* the interface.

Acme is not a text editor; it is a second-system dumpster fire
shoehorned into an incompatible interface.  Because it overlaps so
greatly with rio, lots of code requires special-casing the acme
environment.  It's pretty clear from looking at the code that acme was
eventually aiming to replace rio entirely.  I will never know (and am
uninterested in) the reason this was not completed, but the current
state of it is hacky and gross.

In addition, Acme as an interface represents a complete reversal of
previous 'window systems should be transparent' approaches taken.  Acme
does not allow you to do things with your computer so much as it
requires you to do things *to* your computer.  It requires fiddling.
This approach is fine for some, but others of us just want to edit a damn
text file once in a while.

Acme is firmly with X Windows in the "huge programs that don't actually
*do* anything for you" category.


khm



  reply	other threads:[~2016-05-19 21:51 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 36+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2016-05-19 18:30 christophe DAMAS
2016-05-19 18:40 ` Siarhei Zirukin
2016-05-19 19:42   ` Charles Forsyth
2016-05-19 21:51     ` Kurt H Maier [this message]
2016-05-20  0:37       ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2016-05-20  1:23         ` Ethan Grammatikidis
2016-05-20  1:32           ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2016-05-20  2:02             ` Ethan Grammatikidis
2016-05-20  2:07               ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2016-05-20 11:58                 ` hiro
2016-05-20 12:07                   ` Mark van Atten
2016-05-20 15:49                     ` Wes Kussmaul
2016-05-20 12:12                   ` Brantley Coile
2016-05-20 20:01                 ` Steve Simon
2016-05-21 21:52                   ` Mark Lee Smith
2016-05-21 23:18                     ` erik quanstrom
2016-05-22  7:36                     ` Siarhei Zirukin
2016-05-22 17:28                       ` Mark Lee Smith
2016-05-21 17:36       ` erik quanstrom
2016-05-21 18:16         ` Kurt H Maier
2016-05-21 18:28           ` Rob Pike
2016-05-21 19:21             ` Kurt H Maier
2016-05-21 23:14           ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2016-05-19 18:41 ` cinap_lenrek
2016-05-19 19:20   ` Mark Lee Smith
2016-05-19 19:36     ` cinap_lenrek
2016-05-19 20:26       ` Mark Lee Smith
2016-05-19 20:37         ` Lee Fallat
2016-05-19 20:40         ` Aram Hăvărneanu
2016-05-19 20:11     ` stanley lieber
2016-05-19 20:15       ` Charles Forsyth
2016-05-19 20:53         ` stanley lieber
2016-05-19 21:13           ` Mark van Atten
2016-05-19 21:18             ` Lee Fallat
2016-05-21 19:08               ` Mark van Atten
2016-05-21 19:23 trebol55555

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