Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor

[Pietro Gagliardi <pietro10@mac.com>]

On Aug 19, 2008, at 9:39 PM, Eris Discordia wrote:

>> No, that's not what I said. I said that Plan 9 obeys the UNIX
>> philosophy,
>> not that it was UNIX. GNU obeys this philosophy (up to the point of
>> where
>> to draw the lines on the size of tools). And to some extent, Windows
>> (Windows Movie Maker doesn't call up another computer now, does it?)
>
> I guess "the UNIX philosophy"--whatever that vague phrase is
> supposed to mean--contains "the X philosophy." The core dictum goes:
> "mechanism, not policy." That is, they give you the "femur," you
> determine its use. Russ Cox knows this better; he's the one at the
> MIT. "The Plan 9 philosophy" goes as far as telling you to "not ask
> for a ruler" in your text editor (ruler in vi := a pair of numbers;
> column, row).

No, that's not the UNIX philosophy. That's the X/Linux/GNU philosophy.
Go read "Program Design in the UNIX Environment" by Kernighan and Pike
to see what I mean.

>
>
>> Mac, and I use OS X Mail (so I can get my hands on IMAP's folder
>> system).
>> How about the fact that Simon was able to give you a trademark
>> symbol? Do
>> yourself a favor: YOU test it. Look in /lib/keyboard for some
>> characters
>> and send them here. If they come back as sent, you've proven my
>> point.
>> Otherwise, you found a bug.
>
> Plan 9 is not _my_ pet OS. 9people, and you who are too young to be
> a 9person, are taking pride in "UTF-8." That's been the gesture for
> a over a decade. Now, it's old, it's insignificant, and Plan 9
> doesn't even deliver. Anyway, _you_ made a claim. You have to prove
> it. I don't even run Plan 9 anymore. Gave it up.
>
> Steve Simon's trademark character, I presume, was generated by [Alt]
> +0153--you call [Alt] an "Option" key, right? Well below 255, it's
> just extended/8-bit ASCII. Not right-to-left, not even out of ISO
> 8859. You could generate that character even on MS-DOS.
>
> Though, his email's header says the charset if UTF-8. No big deal.

In Plan 9, it's Alt t m, as three individual keystrokes. See
keyboard(6) to find out what your system would see as Alt.  You don't
need to keep the Alt held down. Now send yourself an email with Alt f
a (the for all character) and Alt * P (uppercase pi)

>
>
>> 	gopherfs -m/n/gopher tokyo.ac.jp		# Demonstration; don't try this
>> 	motorola -m/n/cell -M 'RAZR V3' 555 555 5555
>> 	cp /n/gopher/a/b/r.tokyo.jpg /n/cell/pictures/r.tokyo.jpg
>
> Zing! Who wrote the fs behind /n/cell? You got Morotola to write it
> for you?
>
> $ curl gopher://tokyo.ac.jp/a/b/r.tokyo.jpg
> $ ifconfig cellnetif num "555 555 5555"
> $ mount -t motofs /dev/cellnetif /mnt/cell
> $ cp ./r.tokyo.jpg /mnt/cell/
>
> (You gotta use an archaic version of curl. Gopher support was
> removed when mammoths roamed the Earth)
>
> Of course, motofs and cellnetif are imaginary, just like your
> "motorola." The problem is the same on UNIX and Plan 9, but on UNIX
> it is much more likely that you find someone who solved it before.
> And it is much less likely that someone tells you it isn't "the way
> to do it."
>
> Incidentally, someone I know has recently bought a Motorola A1200
> that runs a nice tiny Linux.

Impressive. Someone learned something from us after all. (1985 -- when
did curl come out?)

>
>
>> Write that in sockets. Since that is what you use, don't you?
>
> Write that in Plan 9 system calls. That is what _you_ use, don't you?
>

It would be about 75% shorter. And you can't just use the system
calls. libc is built around subroutines. In all, Rob Pike got
connected to an IP address in 2 lines of code compared to ~20 for
sockets. ("The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly")

>> Good riddance. But you're missing a wonderful opportunity. Just
>> open your
>> eyes.
>
> "Thank you."

No comment.