Re: [9fans] Newbie question

[Brantley Coile <brantley@coraid.com>]

> My $0.02.

Great that the newbie that asked the original questin has now used
and seen the advantage of Rio and the plan 9 interface.

The comment about some so-called Unix community folks not wanting to
touch the mouse is certainly true, and I've been amazed at that.  To
show them that using the mouse is not anti-Unix, some history might be
in order.

Certainly the first use of the mouse on any system was Doug
Engelbart's use at SRI in 1970.  The mouse quickly scurried accross El
Camino Real to Xerox PARC and was used in the Alto in 1973.  The Unix
folks at Bell Labs got a mouse in 1982 with the development of the
Blit terminal developed by Rob Pike and Bart Locanthi.  That design
brought windows (or layers as they were called) and the mouse into a
Unix system cleanly.  The Blit turned into the DMD5620 and then the
630 and 730.  The Blit and its programs were key to the research that
led to plan 9's interfaces.  The gnot, a descendent of these
terminals, was designed in 1989 to run plan 9 on the desk.  It was the
original thin client.

The windowing systems at Bell Labs went from mpx to mux to 8½ to rio,
with several systems in between, all from the originators of Unix at
the place of origin of Unix.  So, it seems to me that Rio has a claim
to being a true Unix interface.  More so than xterm and vi.  I
sometimes like to use ed(1) for nostalgic reasons, but I get things
done faster in acme(1).  I don't think xterm and emacs are Unix at
all.

I never did understand why xterm clears the screen when I `q' out of
man.  Maybe so I can develop a photographic memory and remember what
was on the man page that I now have to type at the prompt.