Re: [9fans] Sam Rewrite (Was: SAM snarf with X)

[Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com>]

Go ahead, go nuts.  But you'll end up with a new program, not sam.
If you're good, you should be able to leave sam unaltered and just
replace samterm.

>     1) X-conscientious-Sam doesn't need its own
>        window system (with mux policies); the
>        window manager can all do this (allowing
>        point-to-type, and whatever else).

The die hard sam users would disagree vehemently with you.
The nice thing about sam is that it's one window, not many,
making it comfortable to edit a 30-file project without getting
caught up in managing windows.  Sam and rio both do
click-to-type and the windows look the same and that's
about the end of the similarity.

>     2) "1)" means that more than half of the mouse
>        menu items are shed, allowing for more
>        responsive cut/paste behaviour (such as
>        Acme's, or the conventional Athena/XTerm
>        behaviour).

See above.  Cut/paste chording doesn't require giving up
the menus, by the way.  Those chords always start with button 1
being held down.

I still believe the chording code that's ifdef'ed out of the
plan9port version can be made to work.

>     3) Mouse is (gasp!) configurable---via Xrdb
>        if nothing else.  This would cut down
>        on news traffic about mouse behaviour.
>        And Xclipboard would be a neat external
>        mouse-based snarf-buffer array solution.

If you want xemacs, you know where to find it.

>     4) The unshared snarf buffer issue is gone.

Again the sam die-hards will disagree with you on this one.

>     5) The select-while-scrolling problem is solved
>        (perhaps, again, with the simple Athena/XTerm
>        select mechanism).

I'm not sure I want to know what this really means, but
"simple Athena/XTerm" sure sounds like an oxymoron to me.

>     6) Redo!

This is already implemented.

          * u n    Undo the last n (default 1) top-level commands that
                   changed the contents or name of the current file,
                   and any other file whose most recent change was
                   simultaneous with the current file's change.  Suc-
                   cessive u's move further back in time.  The only
                   commands for which u is ineffective are cd, u, q, w
                   and D.  If n is negative, u `redoes,' undoing the   <<<<<
                   undo, going forwards in time again.

Russ