Re: [9fans] Someone made a Wayland compositor based on Rio, Wio

[Lucio De Re <lucio.dere@gmail.com>]

On 5/3/19, hiro <23hiro@gmail.com> wrote:
> i think you mean the devdraw lempel-ziv compressed images. font images
> are just images really (on the memlayer below devdraw), and i also
> tried to understand the compression code (the first i ever looked at),
> but couldn't.
> they did recommend to read that original paper by lempel-ziv and i
> didn't - probably i am at fault.
>
I convinced myself that the algorithm (LZ-77, if I remember right) can
be squeezed into a particular architecture - in this case the C target
language and massaged down to a finely tuned, unreadable mess. My own
failings may have contributed in a big way to that lack of
comprehension.

> i agree there is inperfection. i find it entertaining to find the
> historic reasons how it became like this, and having this excuse
> doesn't lessen their work's quality.
>
That is a valid point, I have a similar concept of DNA and evolution:
making sense of it all is going to be quite a challenge, even though
nothing is absent in the actual implementation. But the details are
layered on top of each other, millions of years of successes and
failures with nothing to flag the one or the other.

> i truly think there is some amazing stuff to learn from plan9 design,
> but technologic change in the meantime makes a lot of these things
> less obvious.
> a lot of us younger people have an intuitive understanding only of
> newer hardware, and no idea about older bottlenecks, obvious back
> then. hence my asking here. trying to check my (i admit somewhat
> phantastic) theories :)
>
There are many things that confuse the hell out of the knowledge I
accumulated from near-as-damn first principles and graphics is high on
that list and has been for a long time. Memory management is pretty
much immediately beneath it. I'm not sure I'll ever properly get a
clear mental model of those complex concepts. Concurrency, I think, is
what makes them difficult for me to grasp.

>> given that Plan 9 is so much simpler than the more popular OSes around,
>> how is it that it does not outperform them?
>
> it does here. disk access on linux is sooooo much higher latency
> indeed. it's truly mind-boggling.

That's nice to hear. The poster child for my gut feeling is acme/Mail.
I used to use it exclusively until various events put my ancient email
address almost entirely out of action. Today, it is Mailman's web
interface that keeps me from switching back to acme/Mail. Having got
Quanstro's upas working (I have sufficient confidence in its
reliability - that's one of Plan 9's less vaunted good features:
software does work) on 9legacy, so now I have to build a mailman
administrator for acme. That isn't going to be quick, even just
starting on it isn't going to happen any time soon.

But the difference even between acme/Mail and mutt was amazing: acme
never lags behind the keyboard or the mouse. You have to lose that for
a while to appreciate it.

> my suspicion is that this helps protect the linux disk performance
> engineer jobs. we have met such a fellow once during some 9front
> benchmarking next to the billiard table. he overheard our conversation
> and wanted to offer his services. very nice guy even. probably best
> for him that he doesn't know...
>
I can believe that. I can even believe that he thinks his role is
justified. But, think about Skype's squiggly line (it is not some
horizontal bubbles - since my upgrade this morning) while someone up
to double the circumference of the earth away types away. Someone
should sue Microsoft for stolen teracycles.

>> why isn't there a Plan 9 tool that can beat Skype at at least the texting
>> portion of its game
>
> you HAVE to try the hubchat on mycroftiv's grid!
>
If you're right (and I see no reason why you shouldn't be, I seem to
remember that mycroftiv's earned his stripes a few times over), it may
be precisely what I need. But can I sell it to a bunch of
semi-literate techies that think Linus Torvalds is the Messiah?

And, please, point me to a useful hubchat starting point? I will
google it in the meantime.

One last thing: the only thing I hold against 9front is the
fragmentation of the Plan 9 camp, not that I think 9front is
responsible, but rather that not enough effort has gone into
converging as often as possible. It's my own project to encourage
convergence just about at all costs. But is it not a one-man exercise,
obviously, specially not this man's :-)

Lucio.