From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <7d3530220702261012r47789b6cvb5c325411f37d432@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:12:54 -0500 From: "John Floren" To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] interesting potential targets for plan 9 and/or inferno In-Reply-To: <13426df10702260708i7be0cd7bs49f7eda72c6935ea@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <13426df10702260119y1d6c77deub0e832482776bb89@mail.gmail.com> <13426df10702260708i7be0cd7bs49f7eda72c6935ea@mail.gmail.com> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 14f2547e-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On 2/26/07, ron minnich wrote: > On 2/26/07, erik quanstrom wrote: > > plan 9 is having trouble keeping the converted. why would > > adding one more layer of goo to the gnu goo stack convert > > the hardened of heart? > > Because the first thing that most people say when I show them rio is > 'yuck'. And, in most cases, they don't stop saying 'yuck'.Acme does > not help. > > Sorry, but most people hate the Plan 9 GUI. It is off-putting enough > that they are not that interested in seeing the beauty of it all. > > It seems a shame to keep losing people because of one aspect of Plan > 9. For me, anyway, rio is not the only piece of this system that is > important. In fact, for what i'm doing with it, rio does not matter at > all. > > I realize there are many differences of opinion on this issue ... > > thanks > ron > I'll just put in my 2 cents on the Plan 9 interface. A lot of it is just plain brilliant--once you get used to it, the way rio handles windows is quite nice. However, I sometimes wish for really basic Unix-type stuff like focus-follows-mouse (very much a personal preference, I know) and multiple desktops (no amount of hacking with winwatch is going to replace those, for me). Acme is... acme. I love it a lot of the time, but the lack of good, basic keyboard shortcuts sometimes drives me insane. I'm not asking for emacs-style C-x C-c, M-x foo-bar stuff, I'm just saying that things like ^N, ^P would be really useful. This reminds me of the "smacme" discussion; I should go look through that again. Would implementing any of these changes attract/retain more users? Probably not. That might require something more serious, like an option that you can set to give MS-style titlebars with buttons, and a taskbar type thing at the bottom (extended winwatch?). Of course, I do not condone putting any such thing into Plan 9 without a guaranteed option of turning it all off and using basic rio. John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn