Re: [9fans] Re: someone thinking about trying plan 9

[Theo Honohan <theoh@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

In message <tVdO5.81224$YX4.2540049@news2.giganews.com>, cbbrowne@hex.net write
s:
> "david.bates2" <david.bates2@ntlworld.com> writes:
> > I was reading about plan 9 recently. To be frank, I'd never head of it unti
>  l
> > a week or two ago... I suppose I was just writing to ask whether it was
> > worth installing at this point in time. I don't doubt that it has some
> > powerful ideas, but does it have any decent apps that run on it at the
> > moment? An example would be apps for spreadsheets, databases, and text
> > editing.... and of course compilers for various langauges. Also, I am a
> > little unclear on the role of rio. Is it the window manager? Is it an
> > essential part of the system or can it be replaced as with a linux window
> > manager?
> 
> You're missing a rather _crucial_ point; there is no such thing as a
> "Linux window manager."

That's not a very helpful answer!  I wonder whether you might have
missed the word "as" in the second last line...

I think you could say that rio *is* analogous to an X window manager,
in some ways.  In the sense that the X window manager is intended to
provide policy and the X server to provide mechanism, rio provides a
particular "window system" implementation on top of the underlying
raster graphics facility (/dev/draw).  As such, it provides a set of
window management facilities, while the draw device multiplexes the
display among a number of "clients", to use the X terminology.

You could certainly replace rio with an alternative window system,
although it's probably the case that most of the interesting window
systems you might want to develop in Plan 9 would present a similar
interface.  It's conceivable that if you want to have windows that differ
substantially from "asynchronous layers of text" -- some kind of
multimedia, maybe -- then they might be better handled by a different
display management discipline.

Just as you can run a "nested" instance of rio inside a window, you
could run an instance of your new window system within a rio window,
or vice versa.  Knock yourself out!