Re: [9front] 9front on the Allwinner A64

[Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 09:04:01AM +0100, sirjofri wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I think you guys don't fully understand what I plan to do, UI-wise.
> 
> I want a pure Plan 9 phone. This doesn't mean I want an adjusted rio and a way to do mouse clicks to fulfill the expectations of what Plan 9 intended for a desktop UI with a mouse and keyboard.
> 
> This means, I want to design a fully new UI system that matches the philosophical expectation of "Plan 9", whatever this means. It's not a definitive concept yet, although I have a few ideas that I want to test out (and bitsy/keyboard will be used as a starter).
> 
> The goal is to have a Plan 9 device that really feels like a Plan 9 phone, but with a natural way to interact with the system.
> 
> Of course I could just copy smartphone UI stuff from Android (or iOS), but you'll soon feel that it's not a Plan 9 system at all. It'd merely be a "modern" UI with a Plan 9 kernel under the hood, much like you don't feel a linux under Android although it is there.
> 
> I want the system to be so Plan 9-ey that you can feel Plan 9 each time you use it. I want the system to be fun in a way that you _want_ to use it. I want the system to be productive so that you _can_ use it. And finally (maybe not finally) I want the system so that you can use it within your bigger context of a Plan 9 grid[1].
> 
> It should feel natural to interact with existing backend system components like the plumber. In fact, Android has a similar system with its intents, but I can't just copy that and make it work with plumber; it would never feel right. I have to go back to the roots of Plan 9 UI development and design a new system from the ground up, that feels as natural as clicking with a mouse inside acme or using the context menu to send data to the plumber.
> 
> I know this is a big challenge and is definitely worth a paper. I wish I had more time to prepare design documentation and concept descriptions for you. The good thing is, I can very likely start developing (and testing, to some extent) on a Plan 9 system on a computer.
> 
> sirjofri
> 
> 
> [1] This means, you can naturally access your phone from any grid device et vice versa. So you can basically rcpu into your phone and do phone calls.

Yes, this is what the hellaphone project was, but with inferno.  The
Android pieces were basically hardware enablement and inferno tied into
things like audioflinger.  There was no android UI left running.  You
instead had a filesystem-based interface to the phone radio etc, with
some basic touch-oriented UI served on top.  It was a similar approach
to Mer's libhybris effort but with inferno doing plan-9-style things
instead of lumping more linux on top.

I suggest you look at what hellphone did before dismissing it entirely.
I also suggest that before you start developing anything you come to
some kind of definition of what Plan 9 "feels like."

Good luck,
khm