[9fans] someone thinking about trying plan 9

[9fans] someone thinking about trying plan 9

[david.bates2]

Hiya all,

I was reading about plan 9 recently. To be frank, I'd never head of it until
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?

Anyway,

See you all,

Chris.

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

[cbbrowne]

"david.bates2" <david.bates2@ntlworld.com> writes:
> I was reading about plan 9 recently. To be frank, I'd never head of it until
> 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."

There are all sorts of window managers that run on "reasonably
Unix-like systems, in conjunction with the X Window System," and since
the Linux kernel combined with GLIBC and GNU binary and file utilities
provides a "reasonably Unix-like system," the WMs cope adequately.  

The _proper_ tie is to describe them as "X window managers."

Plan 9 provides a bunch of parts that are "reasonably Unix-like,"
which would make it not unreasonable to hope that a window manager
might be able to compile and search for resources on Plan 9.

However, one of the resources typically required happens to be an
operational instance of the X Window System, which _doesn't_ happen to
have been ported to run on Plan 9.  

"No X" has the result of "no applications that require X." 

Which leads to:
 - No X window managers
 - No Motif-based applications like Netscrape
 - No GTK-based applications like ApplixWare or the GNOME applications
 - No Qt-based apps like the KDE apps
-- 
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@hex.net") <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/>
"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months."  - Oscar Wilde

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

[Theo Honohan]

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!

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

[anothy]

//you don't need to be root to run a vnc server.

true, but in addition to admins who don't really
care what their users want, we've got disk
quotas; an awful combination. i need to build my
own copies of mk, sam, rc... even things like
pgp don't find their way onto their boxes. the
source and binaries quicly eat up that quota.
-α.

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

[Russ Cox]

you don't need to be root to run a vnc server.

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

[anothy]

//VNC does this job admirably

true, but only if the system in question has a
VNC server installed on it, right? i have unix
boxes i'd like to talk to on which i don't have
root, like my university account. and the
admins there arn't particularly open to taking
user requests for software additions.
-α.

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

[Richard Miller]

> X is usefull for talking to Unix
> systems (which many of us still have to do on ocasion,
> unfortunatly)

VNC does this job admirably (and also talks to Windows, NT, et al).

-- Richard

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

[anothy]

i didn't forget acd, i just didn't flesh out the
list. there's a good bunch of graphics programs;
even more for 2nd edition, which used pretty much
the same theory, if a totally different mechanism.

faces, ip/gping, stats, page, proof... you get the
idea. there's a bunch, but i still say we're short
on applications making use of this. as i've said
before, i still want the fb suite back. there's
various media players i'd like. i could go on.

my point was just that rio can do it; i stopped
listing things when i though i had made that point.
-α.

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

[okamoto]

>layers of text". Acme, for example, or Inferno running on Plan 9 (i'm
>not talking about the console, obviously), or games/plumb. oh, and
>additional instances of rio. we're kind of short on applications that

I suppose you forgot acd (audio or acme cd player? which is right?)
and mixer by Russ.  I'm enjoying music by DVD drive from my Plan 9 
terminal.

Kenji

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

[anothy]

[on the discussion of X vs. /dev/dran and rio]
i think it's misleading to say rio is analogous to *wm while
/dev/draw is analogous to the X server. rio provides or defines much
more in the way of facilities than your typical wm, "intruding"
substantially into the realm of the X server.

look at the nearest thing to a replacement for rio we've got: acme.
I/O behaves very differently under acme, and graphics programs written
to the /dev/draw model are totally useless (producing interesting
results). /dev/draw isn't analogous to the X server - it's a hardware
abstraction layer.

//It's conceivable that if you want to have windows that differ
//substantially from "asynchronous layers of text"... ...then they
//might be better handled by a different display management discipline.

just to be clear, rio can handle windows other than "asynchronous
layers of text". Acme, for example, or Inferno running on Plan 9 (i'm
not talking about the console, obviously), or games/plumb. oh, and
additional instances of rio. we're kind of short on applications that
do that, but it's quite possible in rio.

the above statement could still be true, however. i'm just pointing out
that rio can handle what you're talking about. there may well be other,
better, alternatives waiting to be created. personally, i'm looking
forward to Acme supporting graphics.

//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.

the "vice versa" part is tricky. X, for example, runs inside a normal
rio window, as does Acme. both provide "different discipline" from rio.
but good luck running rio inside either. again, this could still be
true, but it depends on the "other" window system providing the same
/dev/draw model provided by #i and rio.
-α.

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

[anothy]

okay, i'll bite. the statement:

//...the X Window System... doesnt happen to
//have been ported to run on Plan 9

isn't entirely correct. from /sys/doc/ape.ps:

//some large systems, including X11, have been ported
//successfully to Plan 9 using APE (the X11 port is not
//included in the distribution, however, because
//supporting it properly is too big a job).

fair enough. however, as much as i hate X (both the
protocol and the code), and as far superior as Plan 9's
/dev/draw and rio are, X is usefull for talking to Unix
systems (which many of us still have to do on ocasion,
unfortunatly). any chance of talking y'all (that is,
whoever in the Labs was responsible for the port) to do
either a Plan 9 package akin to the TeX package, or to
tell the rest of us what was done to make it happen?
-α.