Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints

[Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>]

On Sep 3, 2018, at 1:41 PM, Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote:
> 
> Acme is a bad citizen in similar ways, but as I said, I suspect that's
> because it was intended to supplant Rio rather than infect it.

I’m still not clear on why you think acme is a bad citizen. If anything it
makes its windows more accessible to other tools. Unlike emacs or vim
or any IDE. What could acme have differently or what other editor is
not a “bad citizen”.

> When people talk about "the unix way," they usually hyperfocus on "do
> one thing well" and leave composability by the wayside, and that's a
> shame, because that's where the real power comes from.  "Do one thing
> well" is a method to achieve quality when you're building a piece of a
> well-integrated system.  If you're not building a well-integrated
> system, you *can't* "do one thing well," because you've signed on to do
> everything, come hell or high water.

Composability is implicitly the key point in “the Unix way” but typically
editors are not very composable. Or composable in a different domain.
Similarly GUI. Once you add a human in your composition, further
composability falls apart! A human being the ultimate “do everything”
kitchen sink:-)

The question is what can be done to improve composability beyond the
“Unix way” or plan9 way.