From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <26ab1bdcf47325fbb3c52195327d6bb8@coraid.com> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Newbie question From: Brantley Coile Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 10:47:49 -0500 In-Reply-To: <58e9b38d7511275ccbfdf283e3ff95d7@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Topicbox-Message-UUID: ee3c3a0c-ead1-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > 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 8=C2=BD 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.