From:	dschieb@muse.CV.NRAO.EDU (Darrell Schiebel)
    Message-Id: <9306041753.AA10693@muse.cv.nrao.edu>
    Subject: Re: $history on plan 9
    To:	rc@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu
    Date:	Fri, 4 Jun 1993 13:53:33 -0400
    
    
    > P.S. The '9term' program gives the look and feel of 8.5 in an
    > X environment. ftp to ftp.cs.su.oz.au:/pub/matty/9term and get
    > the stuff there. It's neat.    
    
    	Thanks for all of the information. I compiled '9term' and it is pretty
    	nice. However, I haven't been able to find a "history" mechanism that
    	would warrant removing the '$history' hook... perhaps I've missed it.
    	The only thing that is close is the 'bkwd' search on the third button,
    	and it doesn't seem to support regular expressions. I like the 
    	GNU-readline approach much better.
    
    	It seems that the most interesting part of '9term', unicode support,
    	is not available, at least I assume it is not. The missing piece seems
    	to be the fonts, the protection on 
    
    		'ftp.cs.su.oz.au:/matty/unicode/libXg.utf.fonts.tar.Z'
    
    	is '-rw-------'. Too bad.
    
    	If I've missed something here, please let me know. 
    
    							thanks,
    							Darrell Schiebel

I'm currently trying to avoid legal wrangles over whether or not I'm
allowed to distribute the font images.  I mailed Charles Bigelow a
few weeks back but have not had a reply yet.  I'm about to mail him
again to find out what's going on.  Meanwhile at least some images
won't have that problem because I'm preparing some myself.

I've found with history that most of the time you're working in
the immediate context, so you can see the command or it's only a
page away.  For the times when it's not I have a simple command (gh --
grep history) which greps the history file associated with the current
window and a global file for this month and prints hits.  Either way
it ends up on the screen and you can just edit it and `send.'

I've found that I couldn't (or wouldn't like to) do away with
$history for the second reason.  It's too convenient.  I've found
9term and 8.5 seem to be incredible useful from the point of view of
the `malleability' of the text on the screen.  (How many times have
you just wanted to add that `-g' flag to a 5 line cc line output by
make and been foiled by xterm inserting CRs at the end of each line?)
You still want the history, 'though, for the commands slip that out
of your local context.  I know not having history when I log in on
Plan 9 is a pain although I'm still using Unix more than Plan 9 at
the moment so I can't say what a different it makes.  It just seems
awkward not having it there when you're used to it.

					Matty.
--
James Matthew Farrow                    | "For in that moment I beheld the ruin
matty@cs.su.OZ.AU                       | of my existence.  My world fell dark
Basser Department of Computer Science   | and my life became a shallow dream.
Sydney University - FAX: +61 2 692 3838 | `Odi et amo. Excrucior.'" - Tlindah