Re: Samx - one more time ...

[Alex Danilo <alex@ishtek.com>]

pj@sam.engr.sgi.com (Paul Jackson) wrote:
>I continue to work in my spare time (slowly) adding features
>to sam+samx.
>
>I worry that I might be "splintering" sam - creating a fork of
>development off the main stream.  But so far as I can tell, no
>one else is touching the code.

I'm sure there are many people 'touching' the code, it's just that
there is no formalised source project base on the 'sam' distribution,
it's just an 'as-is' release.

From what I've seen, there is a huge reluctance by the developers
(i.e. Rob) to add any 'features'.  This is in line with the original
interface which is mouse for movement, and keyboard for entry only.
It is minimalistic, and is meant to be so - things like auto-indent
were never meant to be in 'sam', it isn't a user-interface ideal.

The released code was supposed to be just that - a release, and if
you want to add stuff to it, then go for it, but it won't be part
of 'sam' proper.  I offered some simple mods to do implement cursor
keys a while ago in the comp.os.plan9 list, but no-one wanted it.

So, what I'm saying is that anything that changes 'sam' from the Lucent
release makes it not sam.  So, if you want to add 'features', that
should be done as some alternate project, like 'samx' which is of
course sam with Xtensions.

>I am seeking to make this work available on SGI's Open Source
>Server, http://oss.sgi.com - perhaps within the next month or

I'd honestly consider creating a new project on SourceForge, as
that is (sort-of) vendor-neutral, and it can be maintained after
you leave SGI.

>   4) debug loss of samterm/sam sync.

This, as far as I can see is the only bad bug which exists in the
Lucent release.  If you open a big batch of files, and do something
like:

X/.*/,x/<cr>/d

to nuke carriage returns in all your source files, sam and samterm
get out of sync and barf.  This is a really nasty bug, and the Windows
version created by Sean Quinlan doesn't seem to exhibit it - so I
guess it may have been fixed internally to the Labs, but never made
it out into the public release.

By all means add new features if you wish, but it should be made a
distinct stream of development from that which we know as 'sam'.

Perhaps we could call it son-of-sam:-)

Alex
--
Alex Danilo <alex@ishtek.com> http://www.ishtek.com/alex
PO Box 333 Forestville NSW 2087 +61-2-9975-2297