From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] file name completion From: mirtchov@cpsc.ucalgary.ca In-Reply-To: <537e0437b6e2feff6539786cac9c5ed3@google.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 22:48:04 -0700 Topicbox-Message-UUID: aee421ee-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 The plumber, it seems, is emerging as Plan 9's secret weapon. One that may make the system compelling to others again... A nice exercise in its usefulness is the breaking down of a huge, monolithic program such as Links into smaller parts tied together by plumbing -- from an all-encompassing piece of code that knows how to handle everything from rendering html tables to handling ftp and samba protocols, into a simple html renderer that works with the plumber to give out work to whichever external program is best suited for the job (and not having to know anything about them)... I have found that for day-to-day stuff, the plumber is one of the most-often used Plan 9 "features" that do not exist anywhere else, save Inferno. Second only to private namespaces. andrey ps: this email prompted by the "how appropriate to put filename completion outside the shell, wouldn't have thought of it in a lifetime" foundation :)