From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Brantley Coile Content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 10:42:33 -0400 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-id: <9A3455DB-8B65-46B3-9F57-6E98639392CB@me.com> MIME-version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 9.3 \(3124\)) Subject: [9fans] Musings on Interfaces Topicbox-Message-UUID: 9af8270e-ead9-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 I think I=E2=80=99ve been a member of 9fans for its entire history. The = earliest saved 9fans email in my /mail/box/bwc is dated 2001. But most = of the time I have not said much. Given that the list isn=E2=80=99t very = busy these days, and that I=E2=80=99m doing a lot of thinking about Plan = 9, I thought I would post some of my seemingly random musings.=20 Today I=E2=80=99m thinking about Plan 9=E2=80=99s interfaces.=20 The reason for thinking about those is that I=E2=80=99ve just switch = back to sam(1) from acme(1). No real reason, except for the old adage, a = change is as good as a rest. I=E2=80=99ve been working 10 to 12 hour = days, six days a week lately. I just wanted to change things a bit. = Nothing against acme. I=E2=80=99ve been using it for many years and it = is a great tool.=20 The one time that Ken Thompson visited my office, when I had an office = in Redwood City, he noticed that I was using acme and made a comment to = the effect that =E2=80=9Cyou are one of those.=E2=80=9D He uses sam as = do many of the folks who created Plan 9. Many of the original folks also = use acme. I had did a poll years ago but can=E2=80=99t seem to find the = results. As did I for many years, even after acme make its appearance. I = had gotten a version of it working on my Unix using an Teletype 630 = terminal, downloading the samterm and all. It was the main Plan 9 editor = during my very brief tenure at Bell Labs in 1990. Acme came after I left = with the arrival of Phil Winterbottom and his Alef language. The window = manager was 8 1/2, which is like rio(1) without the bumpers one can use = to move and resize the window. I must say that it is refreshing to be back with the older editor. I did = have modify rio to look for an environmental variable that tells it not = to do acme chording. I kept trying to use chording in sam and realized = that part of the problem was that I could still use it in rio. So, I = added a shell variable that turned that feature of rio off. After that = subconscious chording stopped.=20 I don=E2=80=99t think that sam is better than acme, or even the other = way around. Both do a good job of getting the job done. They are = different. And that difference has an affect on the way one used the = system. When I use acme, I mostly stay in acme, using the win program = for my shell access. It becomes a kind of integrated environment. With = sam, I seem to use tools like sed and awk in the rio windows, like sed = and awk more than when I was using acme. I had a similar thing happen = when in the 1980=E2=80=99s I dropped vi for ed. I used ed until the = 1990=E2=80=99s when I was able to switch to sam full time.=20 But my use of edit commands in sam is the biggest difference between it = and acme. In sam, I think more about how to modify things using the command window = rather than moving the mouse around and clicking on things. The command = language in acme using the Edit command is the same, but somehow it = feels different. There is something to be said for the convenience of = the command windows in sam.=20 If I thought of the change as an experiment, one result would be the = time it took me to not have to think about which editor I was using = while working. Our tools should be, for the most part, transparent. It = took about a week to switch back to sam from acme. That time is = certainly a function of how much I used sam in the past. I=E2=80=99m very grateful to still be using these tools. It=E2=80=99s a = very personal thing but for someone who first used 6th Edition Unix, ed = and the old shell, and used all the versions of Unix that followed, = these tools, both acme and sam, rio and 8 1/2, are an improvement to all = that proceeded them and followed them. Brantley Coile