[9fans] Sam Rewrite (Was: SAM snarf with X)

[yard-ape@telus.net]

(Just read that comp.os.plan9 isn't working, so I'm reposting here on 9fans.)

> would it be utter sacrilege and or a complete waste of time
> to add some acme features to samterm like:
> 
> 1. sharing the snarf buffer with the window system.
> 2. cording
> 
> i've been thinking about this for a while, but haven't gotten
> to it.

If we're going to talk sacrilige, how about a complete rewrite for a more conventional window managment setting?  (This should probably continue, if at all, on comp.editors, where I've also posted it.)

Sort-of-seriously, Sam's clothing is starting to wear a bit.  Acme might make most of that irrelevant for most Plan 9 users; but those of us using X11 *and* devoted to sam notice the aged (and alien) artifacts alot more.  And that's a shame, because with a smart window manager, a good terminal program, and some p9p tools, a pared-down, X-conscientious sam would be wonderful:

    1) X-conscientious-Sam doesn't need its own
       window system (with mux policies); the
       window manager can all do this (allowing
       point-to-type, and whatever else).
    2) "1)" means that more than half of the mouse
       menu items are shed, allowing for more
       responsive cut/paste behaviour (such as
       Acme's, or the conventional Athena/XTerm
       behaviour).
    3) Mouse is (gasp!) configurable---via Xrdb
       if nothing else.  This would cut down
       on news traffic about mouse behaviour.
       And Xclipboard would be a neat external
       mouse-based snarf-buffer array solution.
    4) The unshared snarf buffer issue is gone.
    5) The select-while-scrolling problem is solved
       (perhaps, again, with the simple Athena/XTerm
       select mechanism).
    6) Redo!

I should add that I don't know what I'm talking about; I've never written an a whole X client before.  But some of you have.  How hard could it be!

-Derek