[9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[Ethan A. Gardener]

I just had to crop a bunch of images in the Gimp, and recalled how much I prefer doing it in Plan 9; it's so much less frustrating. In the Gimp, it's either a matter of estimating numbers (for a quick, casual job on visual media), or select, copy, paste into new window. In the latter case, when you save it, you have to find the directory and the file8749832710473name; not fun. Also, I'm not practised at this; I'm no good at cropping with my brain, so I had to zoom, resize the window, and select very carefully so selecting didn't move the image in the window.

In Plan 9, which isn't even made for the job, it's not without its frustrations, but it's got fewer of them than the Gimp. Open the image in page; use the plumber or otherwise enter the full path so you can copy/paste it later. Zoom and adjust the window as you like. In another window, grep for the filename (or the directory, or whatever,) in /dev/wsys/*/label, and type cd and send the directory part. (Of course, copy/paste or send the file name.) Then:
    crop -i 4 window | topng > path/filename.png
This is the part where you'll likely want to copy the full original path. That's one done. On to the next image, which presumably is open in the same instance of page so you don't have to cd or anything. `cat label` to get its full name and path. (It's possible only 9front's page puts the path in the label, I don't know.)

It's an operating system with few pretensions and only clunky image editing tools, versus a powerful two-decade-mature image editing suite. Loading and saving the files is no worse in Plan 9 than it is in the Gimp with its oh-so-modern file selector, and the actual cropping part is easier in Plan 9!


If anyone's waiting for news of my OS where everything is done from an interpreter prompt, I got distracted for a while but I'm on it again now. I'm staying with Forth but looking at alternatives to swap drop and roll -- I mean stack manipulation primitives. Not to start a discussion here, but I've decided it will have a single tree of names for all permanent storage despite supporting architectures without a filesystem. Disk blocks could be a directory of numbers under /b0, /b1 etc. OFW's non-volatile environment variables could be a single-level directory under /nv. Actual local filesystems, including the host's, could go under /f. Perhaps other resources could go in the same tree as virtual files, but I'm not building that bridge until I see the river. It's off topic for this list, so perhaps mail replies to me privately?

Any suggestions for a mailing list provider? My primary requirement is low maintenance. I see many projects use Google Groups, but would like suggestions for others if you have them.

--
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer

Re: [9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[Ryan Gonzalez]

On July 21, 2018 8:21:10 AM "Ethan A. Gardener" <eekee57@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> I just had to crop a bunch of images in the Gimp, and recalled how much I 
> prefer doing it in Plan 9; it's so much less frustrating. In the Gimp, it's 
> either a matter of estimating numbers (for a quick, casual job on visual 
> media), or select, copy, paste into new window. In the latter case, when 
> you save it, you have to find the directory and the file8749832710473name; 
> not fun. Also, I'm not practised at this; I'm no good at cropping with my 
> brain, so I had to zoom, resize the window, and select very carefully so 
> selecting didn't move the image in the window.
>
> In Plan 9, which isn't even made for the job, it's not without its 
> frustrations, but it's got fewer of them than the Gimp. Open the image in 
> page; use the plumber or otherwise enter the full path so you can 
> copy/paste it later. Zoom and adjust the window as you like. In another 
> window, grep for the filename (or the directory, or whatever,) in 
> /dev/wsys/*/label, and type cd and send the directory part. (Of course, 
> copy/paste or send the file name.) Then:
>     crop -i 4 window | topng > path/filename.png
> This is the part where you'll likely want to copy the full original path. 
> That's one done. On to the next image, which presumably is open in the same 
> instance of page so you don't have to cd or anything. `cat label` to get 
> its full name and path. (It's possible only 9front's page puts the path in 
> the label, I don't know.)

To be fair, if you're using a command line, you might as well be using 
ImageMagick (not criticizing your points or anything, just playing devil's 
advocate).

>
> It's an operating system with few pretensions and only clunky image editing 
> tools, versus a powerful two-decade-mature image editing suite. Loading and 
> saving the files is no worse in Plan 9 than it is in the Gimp with its 
> oh-so-modern file selector, and the actual cropping part is easier in Plan 9!
>
>
> If anyone's waiting for news of my OS where everything is done from an 
> interpreter prompt, I got distracted for a while but I'm on it again now. 
> I'm staying with Forth but looking at alternatives to swap drop and roll -- 
> I mean stack manipulation primitives. Not to start a discussion here, but 
> I've decided it will have a single tree of names for all permanent storage 
> despite supporting architectures without a filesystem. Disk blocks could be 
> a directory of numbers under /b0, /b1 etc. OFW's non-volatile environment 
> variables could be a single-level directory under /nv. Actual local 
> filesystems, including the host's, could go under /f. Perhaps other 
> resources could go in the same tree as virtual files, but I'm not building 
> that bridge until I see the river. It's off topic for this list, so perhaps 
> mail replies to me privately?

While I'm replying here, might as well point out that, if you're going to 
do this, I think one thing that could maybe be interesting would be for the 
files to potentially contain rich data, not just plain text? Kind of like 
TempleOS or systemd's journal does.

>
> Any suggestions for a mailing list provider? My primary requirement is low 
> maintenance. I see many projects use Google Groups, but would like 
> suggestions for others if you have them.
>

Google Groups and Freelist are the best. Google Groups has a terrible UI 
but also has better spam filters IME.

> --
> The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer
>

Re: [9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[hiro]

> do this, I think one thing that could maybe be interesting would be for the
> files to potentially contain rich data, not just plain text? Kind of like
> TempleOS or systemd's journal does.

Rich data? You mean like... images?

Re: [9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[Ethan A. Gardener]

On Sat, Jul 21, 2018, at 4:20 PM, Ryan Gonzalez wrote:
>
> While I'm replying here, might as well point out that, if you're going to
> do this, I think one thing that could maybe be interesting would be for the
> files to potentially contain rich data, not just plain text? Kind of like
> TempleOS or systemd's journal does.

I had some idea of structured pipes, but that idea's been on the shelf so long it's synapse-rotted. I was thinking of ls ps and others outputting key-value pairs, fields of which could then be selected by name. I suppose that would make for a relatively complex terminal, but it could also mean you could select different fields in the terminal after a slow job completes. This is somewhere in the top 5 things to work on, after the text editor and portability.

> Google Groups and Freelist are the best. Google Groups has a terrible UI
> but also has better spam filters IME.

Thanks

--
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer

Re: [9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[Ethan A. Gardener]

On Sat, Jul 21, 2018, at 5:17 PM, hiro wrote:
> > do this, I think one thing that could maybe be interesting would be for the
> > files to potentially contain rich data, not just plain text? Kind of like
> > TempleOS or systemd's journal does.
>
> Rich data? You mean like... images?
>

Ha ha! :)

Images in the terminal would be fun, but would have to wait until we have more than vt220/char cell display. That means it's going to get implemented under Plan 9 first, most likely.

Forgot to say in other mail: Nothing wrong with storing structured pipe data in a file, but I'd like the data to be mostly utf-8 text to ease debugging and byte ordering.

--
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer

Re: [9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[Ethan A. Gardener]

On Sat, Jul 21, 2018, at 4:20 PM, Ryan Gonzalez wrote:
> On July 21, 2018 8:21:10 AM "Ethan A. Gardener" <eekee57@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> > I just had to crop a bunch of images in the Gimp, and recalled how much I
> > prefer doing it in Plan 9; it's so much less frustrating. In the Gimp, it's
> > either a matter of estimating numbers (for a quick, casual job on visual
> > media), or select, copy, paste into new window. In the latter case, when
> > you save it, you have to find the directory and the file8749832710473name;
> > not fun. Also, I'm not practised at this; I'm no good at cropping with my
> > brain, so I had to zoom, resize the window, and select very carefully so
> > selecting didn't move the image in the window.
> >
> > In Plan 9, which isn't even made for the job, it's not without its
> > frustrations, but it's got fewer of them than the Gimp. Open the image in
> > page; use the plumber or otherwise enter the full path so you can
> > copy/paste it later. Zoom and adjust the window as you like. In another
> > window, grep for the filename (or the directory, or whatever,) in
> > /dev/wsys/*/label, and type cd and send the directory part. (Of course,
> > copy/paste or send the file name.) Then:
> >     crop -i 4 window | topng > path/filename.png
> > This is the part where you'll likely want to copy the full original path.
> > That's one done. On to the next image, which presumably is open in the same
> > instance of page so you don't have to cd or anything. `cat label` to get
> > its full name and path. (It's possible only 9front's page puts the path in
> > the label, I don't know.)
>
> To be fair, if you're using a command line, you might as well be using
> ImageMagick (not criticizing your points or anything, just playing devil's
> advocate).

`crop -i 4` is just to get rid of the window border. The actual selection of the region of image to crop to, in Plan 9, has nothing to do with the command line.

Re: [9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[Lucio De Re]

On 7/21/18, Ryan Gonzalez <rymg19@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> To be fair, if you're using a command line, you might as well be using
> ImageMagick (not criticizing your points or anything, just playing devil's
> advocate).
>
Without ever looking under he bonnet, I got the impression that IM is
the single utility that is updated every time I dare go near an Ubuntu
update, which of course is far more frequently than I would prefer.

And, equally superficially, these all seem to be security updates.
You'd think after thirty years or so, the community would have
considered adjusting IM's security model?

Lucio.

Re: [9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[hiro]

on ubuntu all updates i get are only security updates. i like that
arrangement (though those updates are often low quality so they
unintentionally break stuff sometimes).

but this has nothing to do with plan9 from bell labs, which still
hasn't updated to dp9ik. p9sk1 is completely unsafe.

Re: [9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[Steve Simon]

Intriguing.

how is p9sk1 completely unsafe?

I didn't believe the key exchange contained enough cleartext to make it
realisticly breakable, however I may be fooling myself.

I am not saying it cannot be improved upon, but I didn't think it was insecure.

-Steve			[sent from my plan9 using p9sk1]

Re: [9fans] I prefer cropping images in Plan 9

[hiro]

Steve, p9sk1 blares your DES-encrypted secrets into the open.
If you want to understand more I suggest reading the 9front man page authsrv(6).
This is why dp9ik has been built.