[9fans] Future of Plan9

[9fans] Future of Plan9

[Jaytee]

Hello everybody!

I'm very green about Plan9.
I justo found it in the net and i'm curious about it's future.
Do you think that is good idea to learn using and programming Plan9?
Is there any future for this system?  If yes then in what industry?
In what kind of machines Plan 9 is used?  In Palmtops?  or maybe
specialized web servers?  maybe in any other industry?
Excuse me my questions, i know they may be silly, i just want to hear
some opinions from people who use Plan 9 in their work places or homes.



Greetings!

Jacek Szydlowski
jaytee@janowo.net

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Jaytee wrote:
> Do you think that is good idea to learn using and programming Plan9?
> Is there any future for this system?  If yes then in what industry?

Plan 9 is about ideas, not markets.

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Jim Choate]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Douglas A. Gwyn wrote:

> Jaytee wrote:
> > Do you think that is good idea to learn using and programming Plan9?
> > Is there any future for this system?  If yes then in what industry?
>
> Plan 9 is about ideas, not markets.

He means the 'market of ideas'.

Everything that involves more than two is a 'market' by definition.

Yes, there is a future to Plan 9, just don't look here.

Hangar 18 is a the first Plan 9 co-operative of Plan 9 users (there are
about a dozen of us so far) which is focused on the real world use and
growth of Plan 9, as compared to the goal of the 9Fans list (which is to
keep Plan 9 a research/ivor tower application).

http://open-forge.org

It is important to understand that the real world growth of Plan 9 is in
direct opposition to the goals and desires of the original developers and
9Fans subscribers.


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage@ssz.com                            jchoate@open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Russ Cox]

> It is important to understand that the real world growth of Plan 9 is in
> direct opposition to the goals and desires of the original developers and
> 9Fans subscribers.

It is important to understand that this is Jim Choate's opinion
and not necessarily a true statement.

Russ

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Jim Choate]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Russ Cox wrote:

> > It is important to understand that the real world growth of Plan 9 is in
> > direct opposition to the goals and desires of the original developers and
> > 9Fans subscribers.
>
> It is important to understand that this is Jim Choate's opinion
> and not necessarily a true statement.

Ditto, however I believe the evidence will speak for itself. And there
will be no discussion of 'opinion' at that juncture.

Irrespective of Russ' opinion, the fact remains that this list and many of
its members are -not- interested in the growth of Plan 9 outside of a
small research community.

You'll find the appropriate quotes, at least two from Russ in the last two
years, in the archives to that effect.


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage@ssz.com                            jchoate@open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

We have gone through this before.
I'm using it for my real world work, as others do.
Could we stop discussing philosophy and get back to system
issues?

thanks a lot

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Jim Choate wrote:

> It is important to understand that the real world growth of Plan 9 is in
> direct opposition to the goals and desires of the original developers and
> 9Fans subscribers.

not at all true for us.

ron

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Dan Cross]

> It is important to understand that the real world growth of Plan 9 is in
> direct opposition to the goals and desires of the original developers and
> 9Fans subscribers.

So why do you still subscribe to 9fans?

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[matt]

>
> So why do you still subscribe to 9fans?
>


maybe it's time to send in the BSA to audit for any plan9 license violations
;)

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Jim Choate]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Fco.J.Ballesteros wrote:

> We have gone through this before.

And we ain't done yet, by a long shot.

> I'm using it for my real world work, as others do.

BFD, that is -not- the measure of success in Open Source. User base is
(just as in real world commercial software).

> Could we stop discussing philosophy and get back to system
> issues?

You draw a specious distinction. One can't exist without the other. If you
don't want to participate in the discussion then don't (I believe Plan 9
has a 'd' key like most other OS'es). Stay stuck in the compiler telling
yourself the same old same old, that's your choice. Nobody makes you reply
to my submissions to this list other than your own bruised ego.

The reality is that the Plan 9 community, as I've said before, is inbread
and really not effective at developing a -thriving- user community. You
can write all the nifty code you want, if nobody uses it you've wasted
your effort. A user community equals success, period.

After being available for two(!!!) years some very important observations
can be made about the (in)viability of the Plan 9 developer community as
it stands now.

-	Not a single other user group exists (it's ok, Hangar 18 has
	folks in several cities around the US). -NO- other efforts
	are extant outside of Hangar 18.

	After two(!!!) years that's an embarassing statement to make,
	even for me. It didn't take but a little over a year from the
	first time Linus released Linux until the first user groups
	started. I have a hard time explaining in a rational, reasonable
	way to people who have a interest in using Plan 9 why this is. It
	in fact is one of the major turn-offs to get people to even try it.
	People who are technically aware of the history of Unix and Plan 9
	generally walk away in shock.

-	There are no(!!!) introductory documents for new users (don't
	worry, Hangar 18 is working on that now.

-	I've yet to see an actual article in -any- of the commercial or
	Open Source technical or user community literature (it's Ok,
	we're working on that too).

-	The boot process is still one of the most aggravating issues for
	any new Plan 9 user (we're working on that also).

-	The commercial outlet for Plan 9 has zero, nada, nil, null
	programs for fostering user communities. The best we've received
	to date is some snide comment by one of the reps about free
	t-shirts if somebody writes code. As if getting people to use that
	code isn't at least as important (especially if you want people
	to buy gobs of your product - 90% of all users are just that,
	users; not developers).

	I had hoped to address this issue by forming a LLC but the poor
	economy has dashed that because the other participants in the
	fledgling effort simply don't have the resources at this time
	so we're going to have to put that one off for the time being.

-	Plan 9 is a -distributed- OS, using it on your own personal
	desktop is like driving a Indy car around a Malibu Grand Prix
	track (no affiliation or insult intended to Malibu). Not a single
	resource exists outside of Hangar 18 to foster the growth and
	development of distributed resources for public access via Open
	Source efforts.

-	I've made two offers to public comment about Plan 9 events to
	 get users to appear at events where Plan 9 was supposedly to be
	'demonstrated'.

	That's a pitifull responce and in and of itself justifies heaps
	of abuse on the development community. The offer stands open to
	any individual or organization that is interested in promoting
	wider use of Plan 9, I will do whatever I can do help.

-	There is no effort outside of Hangar 18 to create a Open Source
	public access point into relevant resources. Instead we get an
	endless stream of "Try this site..." instead of a more reasoned,
	and rational Plan 9 approach of attaching those resources to a
	common name space and having them appear automagically to -all-
	users in tandem.

	What a joke, the Plan 9 developers don't even understand how to
	use their own creation effectively. Instead they use the same old
	same old, treating Plan 9 as if it were just another varient of
	*nix.

-	There are -no- efforts outside of Hangar 18 to foster the use
	of Plan 9 and wireless networking to really demonstrate the
	power of distributed computing (to quote Rheingold - what
	happens when that PDA in your hand is the front end to a
	tera-flop distributed computing resource?). If we follow the
	Plan 9 development community we'll never know. Plan 9 has the
	power to give us that -TODAY-.

What a sad list of failures of the Plan 9 development community. And it
would take such little effort to do something about each and every one of
them. Plan 9 has such promise and to think it will die because the people
who create it lack the vision to understand how to really use it. Of
course part of the problem is that many of the developers have never
really embraced the concept of Open Source and what that means to them
individually, let alone having any interest in distributed computing
outside of getting their name plastered on some source tree somewhere
that will be admired by some small closed community. Bruised ego indeed.

Sigh.

Hangar 18 may be slow and poor, but at least we act.


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage@ssz.com                            jchoate@open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Andrew]

for what its worth, ive been trying to get my own plan 9 setup going,
and more importantly, offer free accounts on it to anyone who wants
one. Its been a slow process and university work/life takes too much time
to let me get away and do more work on it. Realistically, theres not going to
be a huge number of people who _actually_ want to try and use my plan9
setup, but Im trying to at least raise awareness about it and its ideas.

There is some work, although small, outside of hangar 18.

>
> -	Not a single other user group exists (it's ok, Hangar 18 has
> 	folks in several cities around the US). -NO- other efforts
> 	are extant outside of Hangar 18.
>
<snip>
> -	Plan 9 is a -distributed- OS, using it on your own personal
> 	desktop is like driving a Indy car around a Malibu Grand Prix
> 	track (no affiliation or insult intended to Malibu). Not a single
> 	resource exists outside of Hangar 18 to foster the growth and
> 	development of distributed resources for public access via Open
> 	Source efforts.
>
<snip>
> -	There is no effort outside of Hangar 18 to create a Open Source
> 	public access point into relevant resources. Instead we get an
> 	endless stream of "Try this site..." instead of a more reasoned,
> 	and rational Plan 9 approach of attaching those resources to a
> 	common name space and having them appear automagically to -all-
> 	users in tandem.
>
> 	What a joke, the Plan 9 developers don't even understand how to
> 	use their own creation effectively. Instead they use the same old
> 	same old, treating Plan 9 as if it were just another varient of
> 	*nix.
>
> -	There are -no- efforts outside of Hangar 18 to foster the use
> 	of Plan 9 and wireless networking to really demonstrate the
> 	power of distributed computing (to quote Rheingold - what
> 	happens when that PDA in your hand is the front end to a
> 	tera-flop distributed computing resource?). If we follow the
> 	Plan 9 development community we'll never know. Plan 9 has the
> 	power to give us that -TODAY-.
>

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[ozan s yigit]

jim choate:

> Yes, there is a future to Plan 9, just don't look here.

?? this is as good a place as any to look. where else would you find the
people who produce things like the new new security architecture, or the
real-time extensions? in an old and abandoned hangar?

oz
--
music is the space between the notes. | www.cs.yorku.ca/~oz
                   -- claude debussy  | york u. dept of computer science

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[matt]

sorry for being sucked in

> > We have gone through this before.
> And we ain't done yet, by a long shot.

how tiresome

>
> > I'm using it for my real world work, as others do.
>
> BFD, that is -not- the measure of success in Open Source. User base is
> (just as in real world commercial software).

That is an assumption *you* make.

I don't get this fascination with domination.

The measure of Plan 9's success [and indeed any project] can only be "does
it meet the objectives of it's creators?"

"Plan 9 began in the late 1980's as an attempt to have it both ways: to
build a system that was centrally administered and cost-effective using
cheap modern microcomputers as its computing elements. "

That's it. Any other metric you apply about success or failure is one you
have decided upon.
Criticising those who don't share your objectives for not doing so is pretty
childish.


I think it is lofty and noble that you wish to bring more people to plan9
but that is you scratching your itch.
I don't think for one minute it is the job of Russ, Rob, Dave et. al. to not
only develop, support and maintain plan9 in their own time in a decimated
lab owned by a company with financial woes where morale is lowered and the
future more uncertain than before but you want them out there drumming up
new users too! And if they go about this in a way you don't like you will
berate and insult them!


> The reality is that the Plan 9 community, as I've said before, is inbread
> and really not effective at developing a -thriving- user community.

I don't surround myself in bread and I am not inbred.

There have been over 75 contributors to the mailing list so far this year.
Are saying that all of them come from the same circle of users?

The day I installed Plan 9 for the first time I had not heard of anyone on
this list except Dennis [and I didn't know he was anything to do with it at
the time].

I can't be the only person here that's not from Bell Labs or associated
places.

Is it just me, am I the only outsider?

> You can write all the nifty code you want, if nobody uses it you've wasted
> your effort. A user community equals success, period.

Not true. code for codes sake to scratch any itch you like is a self
contained success

Nobody should *ever* use my irc bot but does that mean it's a failure and
writing it was a mistake?


> After two(!!!) years that's an embarassing statement to make,
> even for me. It didn't take but a little over a year from the
> first time Linus released Linux until the first user groups
> started. I have a hard time explaining in a rational, reasonable
> way to people who have a interest in using Plan 9 why this is. It
> in fact is one of the major turn-offs to get people to even try it.

Are you really telling me that you have met someone that said
"I would use Plan 9 only there aren't enough user groups in my area"

Last time it was the licence that stopped people using it, now it's the user
community.

I think it says more about the people you introduce Plan 9 to than anything
about Plan 9.

Linux filled a niche - a free unix like system.
Plan 9's niche is very different.

Feel free to make your own decisions about what you would like to see but
why the hostility towards those that don't share *YOUR* vision.


> - There are no(!!!) introductory documents for new users (don't
> worry, Hangar 18 is working on that now.

eh? I have a set of manuals & papers here and all the source code. That is
all I needed to get started.
Okay, it's a subset of the ideal set of documentation but it's more than I
got when I bought my car and a damn sight more than you get with Windows

> - The boot process is still one of the most aggravating issues for
> any new Plan 9 user (we're working on that also).

It wasn't the most aggravating issue for me so how can that be true for all
users?


> - The commercial outlet for Plan 9 has zero, nada, nil, null
> programs for fostering user communities.

let's get blogging

honestly,

"we are going to ...", "we are planning to ...", "why aren't you ..."

put up and people will shut up



M

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Digby Tarvin]

A saying involving mouths of gift horses springs to mind about now...

If only Bell Labs would only let us pay for Plan9 (and I for one paid for
my first copy, and was happy to do so), maybe they would have
an incentive to worry about its commercial use...

I like Plan9 (and Unix) because of good design and source availability,
not because I can get them free. I avoid Windows, not because it is
commercial, but because there is no source and it is rubbish. Not that I
am complaining about being forced to keep my money..

But as long as Plan9 makes no money for the labs, they really have no
business wasting shareholders money promoting it or worrying about
commercial acceptance (potentially by competitors)...

For now, I don't think anyone would complain if this discussion went
off line...

Regards,
DigbyT

matt:
> > > We have gone through this before.
> > And we ain't done yet, by a long shot.
>
> how tiresome
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Sam]

I hate to even respond to the banter coming out of Austin
these days, but corrections must be made.

> -	Not a single other user group exists (it's ok, Hangar 18 has
> 	folks in several cities around the US). -NO- other efforts
> 	are extant outside of Hangar 18.

I'm in a local 9 users group in Athens, GA which I run.  I've gone to the
local linux user group showcase - attendance might reach 500 all day - and
hosted a table for 9 and inferno.  My experience was that technically
saavy people (read: contemporary system administrators) were curious and
impressed with simple things like bound directories and ftpfs, but
generally lost interest by the time i got around to acme.  The
"enthusiasts" didn't get it at all, and really didn't like the GUI.
Conclusion?  It's hard for non-programmers to see the beauty in 9.

>
> -	There are no(!!!) introductory documents for new users (don't
> 	worry, Hangar 18 is working on that now.
>

If you would like someone to proof them for grammar and spelling
errors, please let me know.

>
> course part of the problem is that many of the developers have never
> really embraced the concept of Open Source and what that means to them
> individually, let alone having any interest in distributed computing
> outside of getting their name plastered on some source tree somewhere
> that will be admired by some small closed community. Bruised ego indeed.
>

The modest programmer does not need to parade and showcase
each of h(is|er) accomplishments, especially to an audience
whose immediate response will be, "Cool!  Can you port that
to linux?"

If you sit down and rationalize out the percentages of
people who would appreciate, say, linux for its
"advantages" (Desktop WIMP style software, familiar
Unixish underpinnings, and virtual system administratorless
installation and operation) vs. 9 and hers it shouldn't
come as a surprise that 9's user base is a rat pack
of modest programmer curmudgeons.  Moreover, it isn't
the job of the developers to promote the software
in a public arena.  You're clearly one of the few
non-programmers in the group and as such it's your
responsibility to bridge the gap.  You guys can
do the work of bringing it to the people while
the curmudgeons keep building things like Fossil.

Please, stop with the baseless manic insults.  I
sure hope you started this rant with the troll about
plan 9's future because if not, you've likely scared
off somone who genuinely was interested; I hope it's
rather obvious this effect is converse to your goal.

Cheers,

Sam

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[north_]

> Plan 9 is about ideas, not markets.
Right on
north_

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[adrian Damn it !]

Sam wrote:

> I'm in a local 9 users group in Athens, GA which I run.  I've gone to the
> local linux user group showcase - attendance might reach 500 all day - and
> hosted a table for 9 and inferno.  My experience was that technically
> saavy people (read: contemporary system administrators) were curious and
> impressed with simple things like bound directories and ftpfs, but
> generally lost interest by the time i got around to acme.  The
> "enthusiasts" didn't get it at all, and really didn't like the GUI.
> Conclusion?  It's hard for non-programmers to see the beauty in 9.


<<SNIP !>>

Sam, I`m in Lawrenceville,GA ! Didn`t know anyone was so close.
Send details about your group.

Adrian

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Matt Keeler]

adrian Damn it ! writes:

> Sam wrote:
>
>> I'm in a local 9 users group in Athens, GA which I run.  I've gone to the
>> local linux user group showcase - attendance might reach 500 all day -
>> and
>> hosted a table for 9 and inferno.  My experience was that technically
>> saavy people (read: contemporary system administrators) were curious and
>> impressed with simple things like bound directories and ftpfs, but
>> generally lost interest by the time i got around to acme.  The
>> "enthusiasts" didn't get it at all, and really didn't like the GUI.
>> Conclusion?  It's hard for non-programmers to see the beauty in 9.
>
>
> <<SNIP !>>
>
> Sam, I`m in Lawrenceville,GA ! Didn`t know anyone was so close.
> Send details about your group.
>
> Adrian
>

I'm in Atlanta/Decatur :)

 --
Matt Keeler - matt@ircguru.org
http://www.ircguru.org/

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[bwc]

And I'm in Athens, Ga as well.  (Not to be confused with Texas.)

 Brantley

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[okamoto]

> Irrespective of Russ' opinion, the fact remains that this list and many of
> its members are -not- interested in the growth of Plan 9 outside of a
> small research community.

I've never heard what you contributed to any of Plan 9 world.
On the other hand, Russ made many things available to us.
Then, I believe Russ.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[bwc]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 724 bytes --]

``Hold it you two!  Plan 9 is both a floor-wax AND a desert topping!''
	-- Chevy Chase, Saturday Night Live

``If you want PL/I you know where you can find it!''
	-- Dennis Ritchie

We at Coraid are commited to using Plan 9 as a development environment,
and as a source of new ideas on designing our products.
As individuals, we have done so since the 1995 2nd Edition.  The
PIX from Cisco was developed using Plan 9, as was the LocalDirector.  That
seems to qualify as real world.

Markets are complex things having a more to do with societal influences
than detailed technology.  How else can we explain VHS, Windows,
and the `Survivors' television show?

This message benefits the new readers of the list.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 2109 bytes --]

From: "Ronald G. Minnich" <rminnich@lanl.gov>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Cc: hangar18-general@open-forge.org, <hell@einstein.ssz.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 07:35:54 -0700 (MST)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0302110735410.638-100000@carotid.ccs.lanl.gov>

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Jim Choate wrote:

> It is important to understand that the real world growth of Plan 9 is in
> direct opposition to the goals and desires of the original developers and
> 9Fans subscribers.

not at all true for us.

ron

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Ross Evans]

"William Staniewicz" <wstan@localhostnl.demon.nl> wrote in message
news:20010102192314.0CA33199EB@mail.cse.psu.edu...
> I wish web design professionals would take a few steps
> back from Flash and frames. I hate to sound "minimal", but
> I would be very with just a Lynx type browser if I could get the
> content I really need and not the other stuff that just takes
> alot of time to get and sort out.
>
> Bill
>
>

Im very glad this thread started, I have been playing with Plan9 for some
time. I too find the current web *browsing* paradigm less than satisfactory.
I have been working on some ideas for an application for plan9, that allows
one to navigate information with the fluidity of current point-and-click
browsers. I envisage an application that supports *full* HTML 4.0 and a good
portion of CSS 1/2. However, this support would not form part of a rendering
engine, rather some kind of translation system, that would take the
interpret the various tags attached to the document, then layout the page in
a information centric way.

Currently, the idea I have is hazy at best, I know the kind of thing I want,
but it is hard to describe. I don't want to take all the fun out of webpages
by any means. Images etc do have a place, I just don't think that the
inability of platform X or Y to display a certain aspect of a webpage should
make that page unusable to them. Im looking for a solution that gets around
this. Lynx is 1 way of doing this, but IMO it takes things too far. I want
to retain images and text layout, but I want a paradigm that is more suited
to plan9

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[William Staniewicz]

I wish web design professionals would take a few steps
back from Flash and frames. I hate to sound "minimal", but
I would be very with just a Lynx type browser if I could get the
content I really need and not the other stuff that just takes
alot of time to get and sort out.

Bill

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[matt heath]

> I wish web design professionals would take a few steps
> back from Flash and frames. I hate to sound "minimal", but
> I would be very with just a Lynx type browser if I could get the
> content I really need and not the other stuff that just takes
> alot of time to get and sort out.

in defence of some of us :

1. blame the client
2. blame the users


M

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Chris Locke]

Boyd wrote...
> i tried to add in proxy-auth -- eject, eject, eject!

Shouldn't that be "reject, reject, reject"?

more seriously - got an RFC for proxy-auth?
Save me the time of digging around for it and I may have some
spare time to put it in Charon.

BTW. What in particular did you not like about the Charon code?
There is certainly some grot still in there - the worst stuff is the lame
attempt at I18n introduced by Lucent (not the labs).
I completely stripped this out in an (unpublished) I18n version that I need
to do some more work on

The original code from the labs is excellent - well structured and very readable.
Especially given the complete crock-of-poo standards it is trying to adhere to.
I wont comment on my own contributions.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Anssi Porttikivi]

> i've tried mothra and charon, and
> neither satisfies me.  there's
> got to be a better way than
> the netscape and ie model,

I've been thinking this for a long time too. My best bet would be not
to think about "browsing" remote "media", but just executing Dis code
remotely.

If the Dis code is a remote or pseudo-remote stub that reads remote
HTML trough (a pre-mount required) local /gethttp and pushes it to
local /renderhtml, then fine. You actually opened a URL in a local
browser. If it does something completely different, fine.

What we need is a standard way for for listing and addressing remote
Dis-objects, getting information of them, categorizing them, executing
them in various standard file system mount contexts, asking for various
media and serialized data representations of them as output channels,
and controlling them with standard input channel configurations.

And this system should have a standard mapping of URLs to special
legacy class of Dis-pseudo-objects, i.e. http accessible html files
masked by Dis code stubs, just like Web browsers can access gopher-
objects with URL-references.

Of course we first need the legacy functionality of /gethttp
and /renderhtml with respect for real life production class
implementation of Internet Explorer idiosyncracies, bells and whistles.
We can pretty much forget about other browser compatibility, to make
the implementation a little more manageable.

Start with porting IE, if Microsoft allows you. They might. They have
an interest in Inferno. They were a beta tester. They had negotiations
with Lucent. They could still buy Inferno, which would save the world.
If you can't get IE ported, port Opera. Forget Charon and Mothra, they
are toys.


Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[cLIeNUX user]

rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com... 
>	wouldn't a mothra port be the deal?
>
>richard miller did this.
>i've tried mothra and charon, and
>neither satisfies me.  there's
>got to be a better way than 
>the netscape and ie model,
>but i don't know what it looks like.
>

Lynx and zgv, i.e. you get a picture IFF you click on the
tag for it.

Rick Hohensee
Forth, unix, stir vigorously.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Randolph Fritz]

On Sun, 24 Dec 2000 02:28:14 GMT, Russ Cox <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com> wrote:
>	wouldn't a mothra port be the deal?
>
>richard miller did this.
>i've tried mothra and charon, and
>neither satisfies me.  there's
>got to be a better way than 
>the netscape and ie model,
>but i don't know what it looks like.
>

I have some thoughts.  Quite possible worth what you pay for them.
Maybe. :-)

Build it on top of a decent language, to begin with--the Python team's
Grail project might be an instance of that.  They ran out of resources
before they finished it, so I suppose one could say the quest
continues.

Configuring the Plan 9 plumber to work with URLs would probably be a
very good idea.  (If this has already been done, mmmmph mmmph
mmmph--sound of person with foot in mouth.)

I think IE 5 and later have some good UI ideas--most notably the
two-column browser with the left-hand column devoted to navigation.
This has been incorporated (in more awkward form) in Mozilla, aka the
browser that ate Tokyo. :-)

SVG (Scalable Vector Grapics) will probably improve the display of
layout-intensive pages, as well as provide an open format for the
interchange of architectural and engineering drawings.  Also more
annoying advertising, sigh.

It would be interesting to use XML as primary text format in a UI.

Randolph

I did QA on mothra at NCD.  I was not amused...then. :-)

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[cLIeNUX user]

forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk... 
>
>>>Is there an IRC client and/or server yet? RFC1459 IIRC. In unix with
>>>netcat and a decent shell a rustic IRC client is a couple screens of code.
>
>beto had an irc client for acme for the old system,
>and since irc is apparently text-based that seems a good
>thing to try again.  no doubt irc has developed realaudio, its own network graphics,
>and quasi-o/s plug-ins with added xml extensions and ircscript meanwhile.
>
Not that I know of, but the Plan9 version certainly should :o)

Rick Hohensee
Forth, unix, cLIeNUX, H3sm

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Dan Cross]

In article <20001224015151.24040199DD@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>	i liked the look of 'charon', until i read the code.
>
>please, do us all a favor and
>write a better one.

Actually, I'd like to see web browsers in general ``go away.''
The web is fundamentally the wrong model; a week-end hack that
wouldn't die.

It would have been much better if the network component had
been implemented as a filesystem.  And the markup language....
HTML has weak presentation capabilities, and no ability to
preserve the meaning of a document's data.

It's a travesty.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Anthony Starks]

Russ Cox wrote:
> 
>         wouldn't a mothra port be the deal?
> 
> richard miller did this.
> i've tried mothra and charon, and
> neither satisfies me.  there's
> got to be a better way than
> the netscape and ie model,
> but i don't know what it looks like.

I wrote this in 1994 --- I think the ideas are still relevant, though
mostly unrealized. Perhaps we can see something in Plan 9...


.....
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 1994 21:29:11 -0400
From: Anthony Starks <anthony_starks@merck.com>
To: bug-chimera@cs.unlv.edu
Subject: The next generation of WWW browsers


Now that we have experience with the first generation of web browsers
exemplified by chimera and mosaic, I think we should think hard about
the design and implementation of WWW browsers:

The first generation is fine as is goes, but I think a tool building
approach that moves from monolithic browsers to browsers built from
small single-function modules would support richer browsing models than
we have now, and at the same time simplify the building and maintenance
of browsing software.

Consider:

 * a network module that takes a URL as input
   and then connects to network server, and outputs HTML.

 * a HTML module that takes HTML as input
   and renders it on some display. Touching a link could send the URL
   to the network module which would in turn emit more HTML to be
   rendered.

  * A control module that communicates with and coordinates
   the above modules for the purposes of navigation, printing, etc.

  * some communication method (IPC, pipes, sockets, etc) that
    is used to send messages between the modules.


With these modules it would be easy to build something like chimera or
mosaic, but, for example, consider an application that takes a list
URLs, and renders each one in its own display---this could easily and
quickly be built from the components above.

Also, since each HTML display is independent, one could touch several
links in succession and not have to wait for the synchronous display of
each.

I know that there are other (better) examples, but the point is that
the right collection of tools can make for powerful software that goes
beyond the function of a monolithic tool.

Why not apply this principle to the design of web browsers?


-ajs-

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[matt heath]

There's always the w3c standards compliant browser which is open source and
written in c not c++

http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

plan9's graphical shell would also promote something like XML term

http://xmlterm.com

which renders xml/html interactively from the command line (xcat)

To bring it in to the plan9 world I suppose one would mount the page as a
file system exposing the DOM, links, images etc. in directories.
Use xcat to render the html and echo to manipulate the DOM in the language
of choice. Javascript would need to be implemented but I've used python,
perl and vbscript to do the job with IE. So build a native script language
and a javascript2native converter.

plan9 would then have great xml tools esp. with distributed execution

plan9 and Inferno are going to have to cope with xhtml and xhtml basic if
they want to continue to penetrate the embedded device scene.
I think the move to xhtml is a good thing for web design.
It would be a mistake to do an html 4 implementation and then watch it all
go down the pan.


so there's an anwer - email me when it's finished :-)

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Boyd Roberts]

it truly is a horrible problem.

there are three things i won't do:

    1) floating point
    2) databases
    3) graphics

i've never read the code to netscape, but i've _seen_
what it does ['syscall' level].

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Russ Cox]

	wouldn't a mothra port be the deal?

richard miller did this.
i've tried mothra and charon, and
neither satisfies me.  there's
got to be a better way than 
the netscape and ie model,
but i don't know what it looks like.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Boyd Roberts]

wouldn't a mothra port be the deal?

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Boyd Roberts]

From: Russ Cox <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com>

> i liked the look of 'charon', until i read the code.
> 
> please, do us all a favor and
> write a better one.

cool reply, russ, but the problem is hideous/intractable.

get me into 118 and i might see the worth in doing it.

but hell, after duff, i'm nothing...

btw: 118 have my CV.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Russ Cox]

	i liked the look of 'charon', until i read the code.

please, do us all a favor and
write a better one.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Boyd Roberts]

i liked the look of 'charon', until i read the code.

i tried to add in proxy-auth -- eject, eject, eject!

but this is inferno/limbo.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[rob pike]

For my rudimentary and highly unfinished Acme web browser,
building on the work of Jeff Brown, a summer student here last
year, I just put the links down, again in square brackets, where
the anchor would close, like this: [http://go.here.com].

The file name for the window is the URL.  Lots of other details
remain experimental.

It's fine for simple text, such as 
	http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/utf8.html
but worthless for image-map pages.  Much more
dedicated work is needed before you'd want to live with
it.

-rob

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Steve Kilbane]

> i can easialy imagine controlls for a web browser in the
> acme structure.

Having played with the concept for Wily a fair few years
back, the trickiest part, for me, was representing the
URLs. I wanted to have the normal text available, and
B3 on the text would follow to the URL's destination.

But how to show that the text is a link? Best thing I
could come up with was to stick it in [...]. Having a
window type that supported more than one font would
help (possible in Wily, which already has file and
directory windows as different types).

The spirit of Unicode could be subverted by using
a different portion of the font to render the text, etc.
but that's pretty gross.

IIRC, I opted for the simple approach: the HTML parser
rewrote text so that it came out as:

	blah blah [yadda yadda][unique] blah blah
	....
	[unique][geturlcmd http://www.example.com/]

So you can see a link, and B3 on the unique key takes
you to the end of the doc, where there's a command
available for double-click B1, B2. Yuck.

steve

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Boyd Roberts]

From: <forsyth@vitanuova.com>
> 
> it wasn't state of the art even for the time and systems for
> which it was destined.
>

netscape?  state of the art?  hell it couldn't even call
the BSD/WinSock socket interface right.  how do i know?
not from the code, but from the 'syscalls' i saw on windows.

yeah, i seen some applications call 'connect' and the loop
on write until it _succeeds_ -- beautiful.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[forsyth]

> Take some bigger app (f.e. Netscape) and thing out how could you make
> his menu and control in acme...

>>Just bundling everything into a single program because that's what's
>>gone before isn't learning anything, and isn't advancing the state
>>of the art.

it wasn't state of the art even for the time and systems for
which it was destined.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[forsyth]

>>Is there an IRC client and/or server yet? RFC1459 IIRC. In unix with
>>netcat and a decent shell a rustic IRC client is a couple screens of code.

beto had an irc client for acme for the old system,
and since irc is apparently text-based that seems a good
thing to try again.  no doubt irc has developed realaudio, its own network graphics,
and quasi-o/s plug-ins with added xml extensions and ircscript meanwhile.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[cLIeNUX user]

forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk... 
>>>The big problem with all the public source 
>>>code is that it's so ridiculously big.  Hundreds
>>>of lines to deal with byte order issues.
>

Is there an IRC client and/or server yet? RFC1459 IIRC. In unix with
netcat and a decent shell a rustic IRC client is a couple screens of code.

BTW, current ircd's have a scalability limit that seems to be reflected in
EFnet being unable to grow beyond about 40,000 users. This is fixable.

Rick Hohensee
Forth, unix, H3sm, sketches of Ha3sm.

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Steve Kilbane]

vecera wrote:
> Acme without graphics can offer simply text menu and nothing else.

Actually, no: it doesn't offer menus. It offers text.

> How will you solve case when you need choose between more choices
> (radio buttons) or when you need ask for a value, string... or create
> check box, list box?

Like I said: people want the behaviour they're used to, and tend not
to think about the functionality they need. With acme, all the text
is "live", and merely clicking on can do something. Want more choices?
Type them into the window. Want to enter a value? Type it into the window.
See where we're going here?

> Take some bigger app (f.e. Netscape) and thing out how could you make
> his menu and control in acme...

No. Definitely not. Don't take any app. Take functionality: fetching
pages from a web server. Rendering HTML and other formats. Following
a URL. These are different actions, and there's been discussion here
about how they could be done in a way that makes good use of Plan 9.
Just bundling everything into a single program because that's what's
gone before isn't learning anything, and isn't advancing the state
of the art.

> I very like things simple and minimized but this should not _limit_ you.

Indeed not. It's one's imagination that limits one. Plan 9 is the only
OS I've seen where "failure of vision" is listed under the BUGS section
of the manual page.

steve

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[matt]

> >>jabber is xml message based so offers much more ...
> there are two ways of looking at that...

the scheme giveth and the schema taketh away

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[forsyth]

>>jabber is xml message based so offers much more ...

there are two ways of looking at that...

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[forsyth]

>>The big problem with all the public source 
>>code is that it's so ridiculously big.  Hundreds
>>of lines to deal with byte order issues.

yes, quite.  that's why i'd asked about the spec
for implementing it (not that i am).

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[matt]

I might suggest a jabber client is a better road

www.jabber.org

you can connect via their servers to many different message networks

jabber is xml message based so offers much more then the dead end icq

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Russ Cox]

	is there some spec. for icq (the protocol)?  i've got some old public source code
	but it looks as though they reverse engineered it, and if i were to implement it
	(not that i am) i'd prefer to do it from a spec, and only then look at source
	to see all the places that the spec is wrong or misleading or extended, as
	befits any Internet protocol.
	
There are only reverse engineered specs.
I wrote a simple client long ago that I could
dig up.

The big problem with all the public source 
code is that it's so ridiculously big.  Hundreds
of lines to deal with byte order issues.

Mirabilis seems to have stopped caring about
the clones, though.  They were sending nasty
letters to others three years ago when I wrote
my clone.  Perhaps it has something to do with 
the fact that AIM has released their spec.

Russ

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Andrew Zubinski]

> But remember one point: Plan 9 is a system use to serve as a
> distributed system, but a personal computing system. If you like the
> functions provided by those fancy OSes, by all means change back to it. We
> enjoy Plan 9 as it is simple, easy to use (is it really easy for beginners

What the nice style to help to beginners...

There was  my question/proposition about the cheap non-x86 hardware for Plan9
terminal (and portable POSIX implementation of cpu/file servers). Now I'm
finished the prototype PCB for such beast (133 MHz 64-bits IDT Embedded Orion,
128 MB of DRAM with some fancy features).  But I change my mind and decide to
implement microkernel based Oberon instead Plan9. Why ?

(It is my point of view and, please, don't blame me.)

If you are not a computer scientist - purist you'll need an OS with the highly
balanced design, firstly - with simple but feature rich API. Why? Cause you'll
never find enough time for learning all thouse bang'n'whistles things like
MFC/Motif/CDE/GTK/Gnome/Qt/KDE... . But some features are really needy like
graphics subsystem for data visualization (does anybody really like to read a
500 MB datafile with simulation results?) and with enough interactivity (o'k,
you can write script which will generate postscript from datafile, then render
ps and view it, but how to change one or more values in this "small" source
datafile?).

What I like in Plan9 design are "components as fileservers" conception and
Oberon-like Acme. But there are too many Unix garbage in system design at user
level - unstructured man pages set, obsolete formats, nothing-new shell,
nothing-new utilities set, C compiler only (and nowbody even don't think about
the possibility of porting something like Objective-C preprocessor and runtime
- sorry, I'm trying, but under the work pressure have no time).

As the result instead personal one-box Unix with TeX (or Lout), Octave,
Ghostscript, gv, and what-you-want-how-you-want else, you'll have an equal
personal 3-box Plan9 network with... oh, yes, TeX, Ghostscript,
something-like-gv and what-you-can-port-with-APE. And the real power of Plan9
are used for nothing - for the Unix emulation. Who really need this "feature"
when we have somewhere ugly but stable and very tunable well-documented Unix ?

This disbalance between clean and clever ideas on system level and wrong target
for common OS design (to build distributed Unix) IMHO is the greatest weakness
of Plan9. From the system programmer point of view Plan9 is the great OS, from
the application programmer point of view it is even more ugly than Unix. Maybe
I'm wrong but I can't see any native Plan9 programm oriented to any
non-computer application area where possibilities of Plan9 are usefull (like
distributed CAD/EDA, GIS). And system is not too young...

So, when I see such posts where somebody tolds us that "it is easy to use" or
"change back to other OS", I want to ask: "But how are you using it ? What are
you doing with it ? What is your application area ?".

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[forsyth]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 353 bytes --]

is there some spec. for icq (the protocol)?  i've got some old public source code
but it looks as though they reverse engineered it, and if i were to implement it
(not that i am) i'd prefer to do it from a spec, and only then look at source
to see all the places that the spec is wrong or misleading or extended, as
befits any Internet protocol.


[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 3091 bytes --]

From: "Alexander C. Deztroyer" <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 09:44:53 GMT
Message-ID: <91ra7i$54s35$1@ID-64718.news.dfncis.de>

> I am still very much at the early learning stage of understanding the
> full potential of plan9. But on a gut level, the word that comes to mind
> is "minimalism". What I mean by this is that if something is not really
> needed, why have it. Acme is cool too. I use MWM on my FreeBSD partition
and like it for
> being simple. Eventually, I would like to set up a home network
> and run it as it was designed but for now I am just getting a feel
> for the terrain. It might be fun to have something like "micq"
> but it's not necessary.

I am a 100% agree with your point. Because ppl from bell lab would rather
use e-mail rather than icq. Well, if you really want to use icq-clone, don't
be shy to write a program or port it to plan 9. It might have use for
somebody. But remember one point: Plan 9 is a system use to serve as a
distributed system, but a personal computing system. If you like the
functions provided by those fancy OSes, by all means change back to it. We
enjoy Plan 9 as it is simple, easy to use (is it really easy for beginners
:-) )

Alex

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[anothy]

i can easialy imagine controlls for a web browser in the
acme structure. you can't have a "back button", but i
wonder what we could get to fill in that function? how
'bout the word "Back"? fill in for all the navigation
functions. the majority of the options could be
relegated to a config file, as they are with Charon. a
"config button" - er, the word Config - could open a new
window with the config file in it.

it's easy to imagine Acme doing all sorts of things
(regardless of whether it's the best idea or not). try
playing around with Acme Mail for a while. for example,
"or when you need ask for a value, string..." you mean
like an email address? well, Acme Mail lets you simply
type it in. there are restrictions, yes,, but it's not
as restrictive as you seem to think. don't think "how do
i provide a check box menu" but rather think about the
functionality you're trying to provide, the information
you're trying to get from one place to the other.
-α.

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[vecera]

In article <200012200058.AAA18825@whitecrow.demon.co.uk>,
  9fans@cse.psu.edu wrote:

> > BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
> > which
> > will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?
>
> This is my point: acme doesn't use menus or buttons, and it doesn't
> need tcl or tk to produce applications which use it as the user
> interface. But it does affect the style of interface you can have.
> acme doesn't have graphics, so you can't do a WYSIWYG text processor,
> but you could provide an interface to a TeX system with all sorts of
> nifty tools. So the question is not what you think you need, but what
> do you *really* need?

Acme without graphics can offer simply text menu and nothing else.
How will you solve case when you need choose between more choices
(radio buttons) or when you need ask for a value, string... or create
check box, list box?
Take some bigger app (f.e. Netscape) and thing out how could you make
his menu and control in acme...

I very like things simple and minimized but this should not _limit_ you.

vecera


Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Alexander C. Deztroyer]

> I am still very much at the early learning stage of understanding the
> full potential of plan9. But on a gut level, the word that comes to mind
> is "minimalism". What I mean by this is that if something is not really
> needed, why have it. Acme is cool too. I use MWM on my FreeBSD partition
and like it for
> being simple. Eventually, I would like to set up a home network
> and run it as it was designed but for now I am just getting a feel
> for the terrain. It might be fun to have something like "micq"
> but it's not necessary.

I am a 100% agree with your point. Because ppl from bell lab would rather
use e-mail rather than icq. Well, if you really want to use icq-clone, don't
be shy to write a program or port it to plan 9. It might have use for
somebody. But remember one point: Plan 9 is a system use to serve as a
distributed system, but a personal computing system. If you like the
functions provided by those fancy OSes, by all means change back to it. We
enjoy Plan 9 as it is simple, easy to use (is it really easy for beginners
:-) )

Alex

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[William Staniewicz]

On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 12:58:51AM +0000, Steve Kilbane wrote:
> > I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
> > namespace (good idea!)...
> > But now it needs applications.

I am still very much at the early learning stage of understanding the
full potential of plan9. But on a gut level, the word that comes to mind
is "minimalism". What I mean by this is that if something is not really
needed, why have it. Acme is cool too. I use MWM on my FreeBSD partition and like it for
being simple. Eventually, I would like to set up a home network
and run it as it was designed but for now I am just getting a feel
for the terrain. It might be fun to have something like "micq"
but it's not necessary.

Bill

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Patrick R. Wade]

In article <91nt3g$t2f$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, vecera@writeme.com wrote:
>I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
>namespace (good idea!)...
>But now it needs applications.
>
>BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
>which
>will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?
>

There was a "panel" library, but i get the impression it went away with
the change from 8-1/2 to rio.  Perhaps it will re-surface.


-- 
	if(rp->p_flag&SSWAP) {
		rp->p_flag =& ~SSWAP;
		aretu(u.u_ssav);
	}

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Alexander C. Deztroyer]

I think people from Bell Labs wounldn't "port" tcl/tk lib set to Plan 9. At
least, I don't think they need such a thing.
<vecera@writeme.com> wrote in message news:91nt3g$t2f$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
> namespace (good idea!)...
> But now it needs applications.
>
> BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
> which
> will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?
>
> vecera
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com
> http://www.deja.com/

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Alexander C. Deztroyer]

Indeed, the multiprocessor support of Plan 9 is great. I think it is
somewhat better than Linux. Because it's part of the original design of Plan
9, what about Linux? they just add it on afterwards. Anyway, there's no
point to compare these two OSes. You won't compare a gum with a rubber.
right?

But I reckon Plan 9 is too programmer-oriented. If someone is willing to
rewrite/organize the manuals it might be easier for beginners to use.
However, is there anyone who really wanna work for that? :-)

Alex
Randolph Fritz <randolph@panix.com> wrote in message
news:slrn93tfgk.1as.randolph@panix3.panix.com...
> On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 09:49:14 GMT, Deztroyer-a1 <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz>
wrote:
> >One thing I can be sure is that plan 9 won't be as popular as linux. It
is
> >because the design on plan9; It is a distributed computing environment
> >rather than a client/server one. Be sure to check out the official web
site
> >of plan 9, you might found some more interesting stuff on there.
> >
> >Future of plan 9? In my opinion, with a little modification on Plan 9,
it'll
> >be great. However, plan 9 is just the same as concorde; not a very
succesful
> >commerical product I think. However, I enjoy using plan 9 myself. It's a
> >little bit too "scientific" if it is to server as a commerical product.
> >
>
> I think that Plan 9 is an ideal platform for ubiquitous computing; I
> could easily imagine a Plan 9 server as the core of a household
> network.  Inferno, based on similar technology, is working in telephone
> switches right now.
>
> It's also excellent for large, loosely-coupled multi-processor
> networks; when those are implemented using Linux, they invariably
> drown in excess (and costly) hardware.  One of these days (but
> probably not soon, sigh) I want to make serious use of it in lighting
> modelling.
>
> Randolph

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Steve Kilbane]

> I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
> namespace (good idea!)...
> But now it needs applications.

It already has some. Or do you mean, "applications that I want to
use"? That's generally harder to fulfil, for any value of "I".

The application card usually means that someone wants to do on
Plan 9 what they already do on their PC. Getting into specifics,
this needs file-format compatibility and/or user-interface
familiarity. What's the point? It's easier and cheaper for the
majority to just use a PC.

On the other hand, if "application" is interpreted as
"functionality which fits in the same niche", without being obsessed
with compatibility, then fair enough. Plan 9 already has some such
applications; where there are gaps, there are opportunities to
reconsider what a user in that niche really needs.

> BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
> which
> will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?

This is my point: acme doesn't use menus or buttons, and it doesn't
need tcl or tk to produce applications which use it as the user
interface. But it does affect the style of interface you can have.
acme doesn't have graphics, so you can't do a WYSIWYG text processor,
but you could provide an interface to a TeX system with all sorts of
nifty tools. So the question is not what you think you need, but what
do you *really* need?

steve

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[vecera]

I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
namespace (good idea!)...
But now it needs applications.

BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
which
will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?

vecera


Sent via Deja.com
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Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[forsyth]

>>I could easily imagine a Plan 9 server as the core of a household
>>network.

yes, indeed.

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Randolph Fritz]

On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 09:49:14 GMT, Deztroyer-a1 <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz> wrote:
>One thing I can be sure is that plan 9 won't be as popular as linux. It is
>because the design on plan9; It is a distributed computing environment
>rather than a client/server one. Be sure to check out the official web site
>of plan 9, you might found some more interesting stuff on there.
>
>Future of plan 9? In my opinion, with a little modification on Plan 9, it'll
>be great. However, plan 9 is just the same as concorde; not a very succesful
>commerical product I think. However, I enjoy using plan 9 myself. It's a
>little bit too "scientific" if it is to server as a commerical product.
>

I think that Plan 9 is an ideal platform for ubiquitous computing; I
could easily imagine a Plan 9 server as the core of a household
network.  Inferno, based on similar technology, is working in telephone
switches right now.

It's also excellent for large, loosely-coupled multi-processor
networks; when those are implemented using Linux, they invariably
drown in excess (and costly) hardware.  One of these days (but
probably not soon, sigh) I want to make serious use of it in lighting
modelling.

Randolph

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Boyd Roberts]

From: Deztroyer-a1 <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 8:49 PM
Subject: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9


> One thing I can be sure is that plan 9 won't be as popular as linux. It is
> because the design on plan9; It is a distributed computing environment
> rather than a client/server one. Be sure to check out the official web site
> of plan 9, you might found some more interesting stuff on there.

a true gem.

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Deztroyer-a1]

One thing I can be sure is that plan 9 won't be as popular as linux. It is
because the design on plan9; It is a distributed computing environment
rather than a client/server one. Be sure to check out the official web site
of plan 9, you might found some more interesting stuff on there.

Future of plan 9? In my opinion, with a little modification on Plan 9, it'll
be great. However, plan 9 is just the same as concorde; not a very succesful
commerical product I think. However, I enjoy using plan 9 myself. It's a
little bit too "scientific" if it is to server as a commerical product.

There're heaps of web page in plan 9 (the play one), I don't see much on the
one you're talking about (OS) though :-) Check out the links on the web site
of plan 9 on bell labs's server. I think they've got some links over there,
I think.

People use linux because it can be serve as a personal computer. That's the
original design of unix. All those features that are available in linux/unix
are added onto the system afterwards. Plan 9 and linux/unix are in different
design. If you're looking for a personal computing enviroment, linux/unix
will do the job better (as they've got more applications and stuff like
that). You're into distributed computing? have a go on plan 9 then.

I've heard that Red Hat linux is gonna develop a distributed version of
linux. Not sure whether it is as good as plan 9 or not. But I'll always
stand on the side of plan 9. As I am not very into linux.

Good Luck

Alexander C. Deztroyer
Stephen Adam <saadam@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:xbIZ5.157945$e5.114349@newsfeeds.bigpond.com...
> Hi all...  I was completely ignorant of the existence of Plan9 until a few
> days ago.  It looks very interesting...
>
> Has anyone done an analysis of its long term prospects?  I'd love to read
> about that.
>
> How many large Plan9 sites are active?
>
> Thanks,