From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.1 (2015-04-28) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.6 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED, DKIM_SIGNED,FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN,FREEMAIL_FROM, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,HTML_MESSAGE,MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE,T_DKIM_INVALID autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.1 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id 36b4f354 for ; Tue, 4 Sep 2018 10:24:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 84EAFA1A81; Tue, 4 Sep 2018 20:24:32 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 29030A1A29; Tue, 4 Sep 2018 20:24:08 +1000 (AEST) Authentication-Results: minnie.tuhs.org; dkim=fail reason="signature verification failed" (2048-bit key; unprotected) header.d=gmail.com header.i=@gmail.com header.b=kEe+ng22; dkim-atps=neutral Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 2D960A1A29; Tue, 4 Sep 2018 20:24:05 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-qk1-f177.google.com (mail-qk1-f177.google.com [209.85.222.177]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6A7ECA1A26 for ; Tue, 4 Sep 2018 20:24:04 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-qk1-f177.google.com with SMTP id 130-v6so1984758qkd.10 for ; Tue, 04 Sep 2018 03:24:04 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20161025; h=mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date:message-id:subject:to :cc; bh=9CPB0iW0tGtyEOIwOWKxeMJP9cDkbGMe+gEfJYkuP/s=; b=kEe+ng22Mdd/DUsMF1IwKTA6eaHgTpVugaZs/uZ8s8k2c7GWZMw28YzK5Olx2gdPK5 CJB8LHp/5om4r2E8UGAlgXUvhz5pXpGO+P8DuZ8AiGAKmdHZHklO4Z6fmB6CuF8x9ZBl B2OhZT4vv5bIn5olDbGcjgqnRqcfdEjGb4aVUASuZ01hSRdQUiuTXmfzQVFWfz1iC5EG WkNVCCaq6GkHhRpdz/CtrAIsXLpjcrBR3DbH4VhYpLHNyXatgIP60AUeGQj3gt46xeGQ D0jcn2DWvmccrgWsqHLVe/4hTBUkugOqiu9/qfcIMk5bQBseXAOOtn/H8zYnO53giy+n CSow== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date :message-id:subject:to:cc; bh=9CPB0iW0tGtyEOIwOWKxeMJP9cDkbGMe+gEfJYkuP/s=; b=s310M8dF8KWVmVwDDSV+sXuFCA0YGJ+5HwF9ATiqliHyxciguQ3ji+yrI7k62UICae b6SFhzbmoFup690Jo4sfy0yh/QVusbLdHYMos3vVUMzQviE2k2q8L4YBSZNYdaJbfCVS n38+o8B6dHOwVCChGjtx0oxG2tUJrhzAOTLHOn2igrnfy/3TX/YNgA+bSb6voVmrsA8H dSW1V5Sx3QLDx/29RpErDiydKS85L+XeHg7QPmVrnuORQvdfYm1/w4Oz71DGvhDeX08m KXVGTWXTD+j4YekKtRUkzhVDHQ3K0DlEgIay2kxaqmJ81RnOT1IQATWbay9qUZGWXsYH jnnQ== X-Gm-Message-State: APzg51CdZfc9Lb49rPCtjEmerLsipNwF77i9ZV83uZChUfRgqukuKw+G 0CJNxTVjbf5PW472YTRPEx2vRdp/NI/1KTxU67s= X-Google-Smtp-Source: ANB0VdZ6FV6nPo+Ik1TGDEODJm3PnqywhgaAYZrwfEflMC6+iScPIweFMMWIFhiHF2eDN1pwRNPxs6nnak/f6E+rOuI= X-Received: by 2002:a37:2381:: with SMTP id j123-v6mr27538823qkj.259.1536056643446; Tue, 04 Sep 2018 03:24:03 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20180831215636.-eCEx%ca6c@bitmessage.ch> <20180903180401.u4MVs%ca6c@bitmessage.ch> <20180903181133.GB81368@wopr> <20180903185616.ZnkRk%ca6c@bitmessage.ch> In-Reply-To: From: Dan Cross Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2018 06:23:26 -0400 Message-ID: To: Andy Kosela Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="000000000000966d720575090eb7" Subject: Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" --000000000000966d720575090eb7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 5:35 AM Andy Kosela wrote: > On Tuesday, September 4, 2018, ron minnich wrote: >> >> On Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 11:11 PM Andy Kosela >> wrote: >> >>> That was one of the main reasons I disliked Plan9. It embraced the >>> "windows interface" trend of the mid 80s. >>> >> >> well, you can believe that, and I can't stop you, but it's wrong. >> > > Can you elaborate more on your point of view? > I don't mean to speak for Ron, but I think I know where he's coming from. There has been a slow shift in the way we use computer interfaces and the > start of the "windows computing" revolution certainly happened around mid > 80s with companies like Apple, Microsoft or Commodore developing their own > version of GUI (which goes back to Xerox PARC of course). Unix received X > Window System from MIT in 1984. > Don't mistake "windows" (as in "stacking window manager") for "bitmapped graphical displays." At the time people thought that GUI is the best and most useful interface > for the new era and text terminal computing is about to die pretty soon. > Well it took at least 10 more years to happen and the introduction of World > Wide Web and Windows 95 certainly help solidify it. > > When Plan 9 was created in the mid-late 80s exactly those ideas > circulated. Nothing comes from nothing, everything has its historical > context. In the late 80s in order to "innovate" it was natural to think > that abandoning text terminals is a "progress". > This is conflating two things: textual interfaces and the graphical presentation of those interfaces. Plan 9 is about both. Unix was born in an era where the TTY (that is, tele-typewriter, as in "prints to paper") was still very much a force in mediating the interaction between user and computer. That evolved rather quickly to the "green screen" terminals of the 70s and early 80s, but the paradigm was basically the same: the serial terminal was a window showing the tail of an infinite scroll of data. The "terminal", as in the TTY, was and is a central abstraction in Unix. By the late 80s, when plan9 got started, the paradigm had shifted: machines now had relatively high resolution bitmapped graphical interfaces, and by and large you weren't sitting in front of a serial terminal anymore. Being tied to a single "terminal" was a hindrance and led to a lot of complexity (job control, terminal interactions with process groups, POSIX sessions, signals and ioctls for window-size changes for programs that wanted to continue believing that they're using a serial terminal, even though they haven't been for years...). Plan9 wanted to take advantage of the new graphics functionality but didn't want to be chained to the complexity associated with obsolete hardware (e.g., the TTY abstraction, which _still persists_ and has its fingers in weird parts of the kernel). They still wanted a text-oriented interface though, and that's what plan9 provides. You sweep out a rio window and it's running a shell. Text in acme is usually editable and there aren't a lot of strange glyphs to click on; commands are strings. And you're no longer chained to a "terminal": I can have many shells running in many windows and they're all more or less the same. And it allowed them to move beyond the limitations of cursor-addressed user interfaces. They could, for example, write (or more precisely adapt) text editors like `sam`, which is fundamentally a textual program but uses the GUI to very nice effect. It may seem dated by today's standards, but it still works very nicely (indeed, I had to run a coworker through a sam session last Thursday; he was a continent away from me connecting to a plan9 system but we were able to do what needed to be done relatively quickly because it's all text and so simple...). I remember when I was in high school driving over to New Jersey and going to Bell Labs and meeting Dennis Ritchie for the first time (a college student I knew was doing an internship there and let me come visit). Dennis showed me plan9 on his gnot (this was back in the 8.5 days), and specifically talked about this: the focus was text, which was editable, could be manipulated, combined, split apart, was self-explanatory etc, instead of little icons like MS Windows and the Mac which were simultaneously static and cryptic. It *is* a textual interface, though it's *presented* and *multiplexed* via a bitmapped graphics display. I distinctly remember feeling blown away by the powerful marriage of text with bitmapped displays; it was a GUI for a Unix-like experience done right. They didn't sacrifice anything, but they gained so much more. Unix was born in the different era. Same with the original IBM PC. That > is why they revolve around pure text interface. > Unix and the PC date from radically different eras. The original IBM PC had a graphics adapter, and that was the expected mode of interaction, not the serial port. Granted that adapter was pretty weak, but it was there. Using a PC, you were using a graphical representation of your text interface. Unlike a serial terminal, where you simply emit the text to the terminal and the terminal deals with displaying it, writing an interface for CGA or MGA -- even in text mode -- involves scrolling the buffer, handling line feeds, tab and backspace expansion, and all the rest of it in software (granted, lots of serial drivers for Unix handle tab and BS expansion, too). But you, the programmer, have to manually keep track of your position in that little 4k buffer. You have to deal with moving the cursor around, etc. - Dan C. --000000000000966d720575090eb7 Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 5:35 AM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, September 4, 2018, ron minni= ch <rminnich@gma= il.com> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 3, 201= 8 at 11:11 PM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote:
That was one of the main reasons I di= sliked Plan9.=C2=A0 It embraced the "windows interface" trend of = the mid 80s.

well, you can believe th= at, and I can't stop you, but it's wrong.

Can you elaborate more on your point of view?

I don't mean to speak for Ron, but I = think I know where he's coming from.

There has been a slow shift in the= way we use computer interfaces and the start of the "windows computin= g" revolution certainly happened around mid 80s with companies like Ap= ple, Microsoft or Commodore developing their own version of GUI (which goes= back to Xerox PARC of course).=C2=A0 Unix received X Window System from MI= T in 1984.

Don't mistake "wi= ndows" (as in "stacking window manager") for "bitmapped= graphical displays."

At the time people thought that GUI is the best = and most useful interface for the new era and text terminal computing is ab= out to die pretty soon.=C2=A0 Well it took at least 10 more years to happen= and the introduction of World Wide Web and Windows 95 certainly help solid= ify it.

When Plan 9 was created in the mid-late 80= s exactly those ideas circulated.=C2=A0 Nothing comes from nothing, everyth= ing has its historical context.=C2=A0 In the late 80s in order to "inn= ovate" it was natural to think that abandoning text terminals is a &qu= ot;progress".

This is conflating= two things: textual interfaces and the graphical presentation of those int= erfaces. Plan 9 is about both.

Unix was born in an= era where the TTY (that is, tele-typewriter, as in "prints to paper&q= uot;) was still very much a force in mediating the interaction between user= and computer. That evolved rather quickly to the "green screen" = terminals of the 70s and early 80s, but the paradigm was basically the same= : the serial terminal was a window showing the tail of an infinite scroll o= f data. The "terminal", as in the TTY, was and is a central abstr= action in Unix.

By the late 80s, when plan9 got st= arted, the paradigm had shifted: machines now had relatively high resolutio= n bitmapped graphical interfaces, and by and large you weren't sitting = in front of a serial terminal anymore. Being tied to a single "termina= l" was a hindrance and led to a lot of complexity (job control, termin= al interactions with process groups, POSIX sessions, signals and ioctls for= window-size changes for programs that wanted to continue believing that th= ey're using a serial terminal, even though they haven't been for ye= ars...).

Plan9 wanted to take advantage of the new= graphics functionality but didn't want to be chained to the complexity= associated with obsolete hardware (e.g., the TTY abstraction, which _still= persists_ and has its fingers in weird parts of the kernel).
They still wanted a text-oriented interface though, and that= 9;s what plan9 provides. You sweep out a rio window and it's running a = shell. Text in acme is usually editable and there aren't a lot of stran= ge glyphs to click on; commands are strings. And you're no longer chain= ed to a "terminal": I can have many shells running in many window= s and they're all more or less the same. And it allowed them to move be= yond the limitations of cursor-addressed user interfaces. They could, for e= xample, write (or more precisely adapt) text editors like `sam`, which is f= undamentally a textual program but uses the GUI to very nice effect. It may= seem dated by today's standards, but it still works very nicely (indee= d, I had to run a coworker through a sam session last Thursday; he was a co= ntinent away from me connecting to a plan9 system but we were able to do wh= at needed to be done relatively quickly because it's all text and so si= mple...).

I remember when I was in high school dri= ving over to New Jersey and going to Bell Labs and meeting Dennis Ritchie f= or the first time (a college student I knew was doing an internship there a= nd let me come visit). Dennis showed me plan9 on his gnot (this was back in= the 8.5 days), and specifically talked about this: the focus was text, whi= ch was editable, could be manipulated, combined, split apart, was self-expl= anatory etc, instead of little icons like MS Windows and the Mac which were= simultaneously static and cryptic. It *is* a textual interface, though it&= #39;s *presented* and *multiplexed* via a bitmapped graphics display.
=

I distinctly remember feeling blown away by the powerfu= l marriage of text with bitmapped displays; it was a GUI for a Unix-like ex= perience done right. They didn't sacrifice anything, but they gained so= much more.

Unix was born in the different era.=C2=A0 Same with the origina= l IBM PC.=C2=A0 That is why they revolve around pure text interface.
<= /blockquote>

Unix and the PC date from radically differe= nt eras.

The original IBM PC had a graphics adapte= r, and that was the expected mode of interaction, not the serial port. Gran= ted that adapter was pretty weak, but it was there. Using a PC, you were us= ing a graphical representation of your text interface. Unlike a serial term= inal, where you simply emit the text to the terminal and the terminal deals= with displaying it, writing an interface for CGA or MGA -- even in text mo= de -- involves scrolling the buffer, handling line feeds, tab and backspace= expansion, and all the rest of it in software (granted, lots of serial dri= vers for Unix handle tab and BS expansion, too). But you, the programmer, h= ave to manually keep track of your position in that little 4k buffer. You h= ave to deal with moving the cursor around, etc.

= =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 - Dan C.

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