Re: [9fans] Why does Acme only show text?

[John Floren <slawmaster@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 8:44 AM, Ethan Grammatikidis<eekee57@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:32:09 +0200
> <cej@gli.cas.cz> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> >  I also take issue with the statement "Acme is a text editor," that never sounds right, no more than describing Emacs as
>> >  a text editor. It's natural to use Acme as a text editor and it provides many more text-editing facilities than Rio
>> >  does, but it is also natural to use it as a file manager, shell window provider, email client, etc, etc.
>> >  It provides more than Rio and it does it all with tiling windows and without menus, but that's just style.
>>
>> I always thought of using Acme as 'The' UI for Plan 9, much in the Oberon way. I'm not a techie, but I use Plan 9 since 2000, or so, as my main OS. I would *way* love having graphics in Acme, asi it IS a great UI, IMHO.
>
> As-is it's actually not a great UI for me, but perhaps with some small changes it could be. I'm still thinking those changes over.
>

Acme is the worst editor/environment, except for all the others.

Sometimes it seems cluttered and confusing, but then I realize that's
because it has more files open than I would even try on emacs, merely
because switching around between emacs buffers is slower and less
convenient. Speaking of which, I recently discovered that emacs (on X,
at least) is now capable of running a terminal which can in turn run
vi or console-mode emacs. OT but madness. Now I want to run sam in
acme.

Eric and myself, and I think maybe Ron, are using acme and acme-sac to
interact with a BlueGene/P system. I write code in acme, then use a
guide file to run the various scripts I need to connect to the
frontend node and launch jobs, then use win to telnet into the
individual nodes and run tests. The real advantage comes from the
"Local" command and the way windows are managed/output is handled.

I'd really like to see acme get support for graphical programs,
although right now I'm content enough as things stand.


John
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