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Plan 9 from User Space

9fans.github.io

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Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#21

Post by cyberpunk »

ryanolsonx wrote: post #2

Acme is an interesting text editor for development. I've used it for React.js development before. Because of how you can script it, I could run Prettier on save and a few other things you'd normally expect in the JS world.

I used it for about a year, once you have everything scripted and setup just how you like it it's.. Meh. Ok? I eventually got tired of only really being able to work at my desktop though (I still couldn't work out how to chord properly when using the trackpad on my laptop).

These days I use goland and vim, and I feel much more productive.. I still write crazy amounts of small tools and scripts to solve little problems though, and my .profile has like 200 alias's, so I guess some of it bled over..

Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#22

Post by butterisgood »

JHonaker wrote: post #5

After a brief diversion with the Acme editor (a big part of Plan 9) and some modern Smalltalk environments (Squeak, Cuis, and Pharo), I can't help but feel like we are stuck in a very local optimum as far as UI/UX go. The insane amount of introspection available to you in a Smalltalk image, and the way every bit of text becomes a potential button or action in Acme just put the lack of creativity in modern interfaces.…

Not sure I'd call Acme a big part of Plan 9, though it does follow the philosophy somewhat. I know folks who use 9front who would rather spend time in the Sam editor than use Acme, and they use 9front as their daily driver system.

But I totally agree with you on the "do something weird" approach to learning and gaining inspiration. Some problems that are hard in some spaces are extremely easy to deal with in others.

I actually do use acme on 9front for a lot of coding tasks in conjunction with sshnet (imagine importing a remote system's network accessibility over ssh - like a lightweight VPN-almost sorta) and sshfs through that sshnet "tunnel".

This gives me a nice code, compile, test cycle that has some "editing" commands that let me jump straight to where failures occur with a single click.

And Acme knows nothing about what it's doing... it simply follows its own basic rules, and the file system underneath is arranged to enable my workflow.

Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#23

Post by tarkin2 »

JHonaker wrote: post #20
Paul-Craft wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could say much the same thing about emacs and vim as well. emacs, in particular, is essentially nothing more than the elisp interpreter, with some good primitives to build a (some say mediocre) text editor inside a pretty cool operating system. What sort of "weird" do you think would be fun?

I have been using Emacs as my daily driver for about a decade. It's the closest thing we have to a "popular" Smalltalk environment. The desire to bring everything into Emacs is the same desire I felt after experiencing what computing could be in Smalltalk. One of the really striking things that you're confronted with in a modern Smalltalk is the Morphic UI system. Imagine that, with one click, you could drop into a n…

You can inspect, alter and debug any website too. (Minification makes this annoying but there are ways around this) The refresh button does delete all your modifications though.

Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#24

Post by typical182 »

ender341341 wrote: post #17
Paul-Craft wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a funny thing I just found out: in chasing the reference cited by Wikipedia regarding the naming, I learned that UTF-8 was invented for Plan 9. http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/plan9.html

My understanding was it was a work in progress and they showed it to one of the plan 9 guys who pointed out a way to make it better and then implemented it into plan 9, not that it was particularly originally for plan 9.

There is a pretty complete description of the origination of UTF-8 here:

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt

Rob Pike opens with:

> Looking around at some UTF-8 background, I see the same incorrect story being repeated over and over. The incorrect version is: 1. IBM designed UTF-8. 2. Plan 9 implemented it.

> That's not true. UTF-8 was designed, in front of my eyes, on a placemat in a New Jersey diner one night in September or so 1992.

Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#25

Post by JHonaker »

butterisgood wrote: post #22
JHonaker wrote: post #5

After a brief diversion with the Acme editor (a big part of Plan 9) and some modern Smalltalk environments (Squeak, Cuis, and Pharo), I can't help but feel like we are stuck in a very local optimum as far as UI/UX go. The insane amount of introspection available to you in a Smalltalk image, and the way every bit of text becomes a potential button or action in Acme just put the lack of creativity in modern interfaces.…

Not sure I'd call Acme a big part of Plan 9, though it does follow the philosophy somewhat. I know folks who use 9front who would rather spend time in the Sam editor than use Acme, and they use 9front as their daily driver system. But I totally agree with you on the "do something weird" approach to learning and gaining inspiration. Some problems that are hard in some spaces are extremely easy to deal with in others.…

Yea, I was really just trying to say, Acme is part of the Plan 9 ecosystem for people that have never heard of either. For me at least, Acme is the quintessential P9 application, but I concede that it's Sam for most P9ers in history. It's probably more apt to say Acme is an excellent exemplar of the Plan 9 way. The file-based socket-y proto-RPC "plugin" way of doing things is intimately tied to Plan 9's design.

And yea, Acme is different, but Sam is weird. In a good way though. I never really tried to get the hang of it, but Sam does live on in some ways (Vim Ex commands and such).

I'm also not surprised that a 9front user thinks it's a good idea to be weird. Just look at your webpage and this very bizarre thing that is for some reason linked one click away on the side menu: http://9front.org/movies/

Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#26

Post by JHonaker »

tarkin2 wrote: post #23
JHonaker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Emacs as my daily driver for about a decade. It's the closest thing we have to a "popular" Smalltalk environment. The desire to bring everything into Emacs is the same desire I felt after experiencing what computing could be in Smalltalk. One of the really striking things that you're confronted with in a modern Smalltalk is the Morphic UI system. Imagine that, with one click, you could drop into a n…

You can inspect, alter and debug any website too. (Minification makes this annoying but there are ways around this) The refresh button does delete all your modifications though.

I know. There's a big difference between peeking into something you're not supposed to, and interacting with a system designed to used interactively like that though.

Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#27

Post by butterisgood »

nmz wrote: post #18
ryanolsonx wrote: post #2

Acme is an interesting text editor for development. I've used it for React.js development before. Because of how you can script it, I could run Prettier on save and a few other things you'd normally expect in the JS world.

If only it had keybindings.

That would be missing the point. It does have limited keybindings ctrl-a = go to beginning of line ctrl-e = go to end of line ctrl-u = cut from point to beginning of line esc = select the last "stuff" just typed

The fact you can create your own "buttons" that do basically anything is pretty nice, but you REALLY want a 3 button pointing device to use it. It also doesn't care about the programming language you use to create such a button, but you will work with the filesystem metaphor provided by Acme itself to get things done.

I find the mouse interface is extremely fast, and when you couple it with the power of the plumber in Plan 9, it's a reasonably good way to navigate around a complex workflow.

It's also a reasonably small environment in terms of lines of code. The Go version (Edwood) is pretty good too! https://github.com/rjkroege/edwood

Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#28

Post by gatane »

JHonaker wrote: post #5

After a brief diversion with the Acme editor (a big part of Plan 9) and some modern Smalltalk environments (Squeak, Cuis, and Pharo), I can't help but feel like we are stuck in a very local optimum as far as UI/UX go. The insane amount of introspection available to you in a Smalltalk image, and the way every bit of text becomes a potential button or action in Acme just put the lack of creativity in modern interfaces.…

Obligatory Bret Victor mention.

Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#29

Post by pmoriarty »

JHonaker wrote: post #5

After a brief diversion with the Acme editor (a big part of Plan 9) and some modern Smalltalk environments (Squeak, Cuis, and Pharo), I can't help but feel like we are stuck in a very local optimum as far as UI/UX go. The insane amount of introspection available to you in a Smalltalk image, and the way every bit of text becomes a potential button or action in Acme just put the lack of creativity in modern interfaces.…

My biggest problem with acme is that it's so mouse-oriented.

As a big fan of keyboard-only use of vim and emacs, this made acme a complete non-starter for me.

Re: Plan 9 from User Space

#30

Post by Weebs »

JHonaker wrote: post #5

After a brief diversion with the Acme editor (a big part of Plan 9) and some modern Smalltalk environments (Squeak, Cuis, and Pharo), I can't help but feel like we are stuck in a very local optimum as far as UI/UX go. The insane amount of introspection available to you in a Smalltalk image, and the way every bit of text becomes a potential button or action in Acme just put the lack of creativity in modern interfaces.…

> And we should all try to do something weird.

YES

It's a big world out there and there's so many cool techniques we know are helpful but aren't widespread and really should be, and so much more to be discovered still!

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