[9fans] User Interface

[Eric de Redelijkheid <eric.de.redelijkheid@xs4all.nl>]

I recently heard about plan9 when I was just browsing the Internet 
looking for some UNIX-related documents.

I saw it was possible to download a copy and since I have an IBM 
Thinkpad 390E which I don't really use anymore, I installed it. The 
installation was very simple; that gave me good hopes about general use.

I trust that the concepts were well concidered when designing this 
operating system, however I have never seen a more awkward user 
interface since twm. The editors, sam and acme are virtually unusable. 
Why is it that such a simple task as editing the contents of a textfile 
must cause so much pain? At least some of you must have seen notepad.exe 
at work during your lifetime? It can´t do much, but it gets the job done 
in a simple way!
Why is there not just one single command to create a new user, but do I 
need first to make the file /adm/users writable, edit this file (with 
more luck then wisdom), and type in at least three different commands. 
When I log on with the new username, I have to give another command to 
get the computer to present me a graphical user environment; which is a 
grey screen.

I don't know for whom the designers created this operating system, but I 
hope that they had human beings in mind.
In my opinion every task performed on a computer:
- installation
- administration
- general use (word processing, spreadsheet, mail etc..)
- programming
should be done with the aid of a simple, intuitive,  point- and- click, 
graphical user interface.

btw: is there a shutdown command or do I just switch my laptop of?