hi, Sam has been my only editor since the X11 port was released in about 1992. I have not really tried acme, I never gave it a real chance but I used to use it to edit the plan 9 wiki so I have a little skill.
I agree scroll select is the one feature I would add - I have a feeling the 9front guys may have already done this... I think it is just habit but I find Sam so comfortable I just resist change. -Steve > On 1 Sep 2016, at 23:56, Winston Kodogo <kod...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Thanks to Brantley for his thoughtful musings. Me, I love many things about > Sam, but I just can't use it as my everyday editor. The structural regular > expression stuff is a work of genius, but I still find, such are my > limitations, that the user interface is just too clunky and retro. > >> On 2 September 2016 at 02:42, Brantley Coile <brantleyco...@me.com> wrote: >> I think I’ve been a member of 9fans for its entire history. The earliest >> saved 9fans email in my /mail/box/bwc is dated 2001. But most of the time I >> have not said much. Given that the list isn’t very busy these days, and that >> I’m doing a lot of thinking about Plan 9, I thought I would post some of my >> seemingly random musings. >> >> Today I’m thinking about Plan 9’s interfaces. >> >> The reason for thinking about those is that I’ve just switch back to sam(1) >> from acme(1). No real reason, except for the old adage, a change is as good >> as a rest. I’ve been working 10 to 12 hour days, six days a week lately. I >> just wanted to change things a bit. Nothing against acme. I’ve been using it >> for many years and it is a great tool. >> >> The one time that Ken Thompson visited my office, when I had an office in >> Redwood City, he noticed that I was using acme and made a comment to the >> effect that “you are one of those.” He uses sam as do many of the folks who >> created Plan 9. Many of the original folks also use acme. I had did a poll >> years ago but can’t seem to find the results. As did I for many years, even >> after acme make its appearance. I had gotten a version of it working on my >> Unix using an Teletype 630 terminal, downloading the samterm and all. It was >> the main Plan 9 editor during my very brief tenure at Bell Labs in 1990. >> Acme came after I left with the arrival of Phil Winterbottom and his Alef >> language. The window manager was 8 1/2, which is like rio(1) without the >> bumpers one can use to move and resize the window. >> >> I must say that it is refreshing to be back with the older editor. I did >> have modify rio to look for an environmental variable that tells it not to >> do acme chording. I kept trying to use chording in sam and realized that >> part of the problem was that I could still use it in rio. So, I added a >> shell variable that turned that feature of rio off. After that subconscious >> chording stopped. >> >> I don’t think that sam is better than acme, or even the other way around. >> Both do a good job of getting the job done. They are different. And that >> difference has an affect on the way one used the system. When I use acme, I >> mostly stay in acme, using the win program for my shell access. It becomes a >> kind of integrated environment. With sam, I seem to use tools like sed and >> awk in the rio windows, like sed and awk more than when I was using acme. I >> had a similar thing happen when in the 1980’s I dropped vi for ed. I used ed >> until the 1990’s when I was able to switch to sam full time. >> >> But my use of edit commands in sam is the biggest difference between it and >> acme. >> >> In sam, I think more about how to modify things using the command window >> rather than moving the mouse around and clicking on things. The command >> language in acme using the Edit command is the same, but somehow it feels >> different. There is something to be said for the convenience of the command >> windows in sam. >> >> If I thought of the change as an experiment, one result would be the time it >> took me to not have to think about which editor I was using while working. >> Our tools should be, for the most part, transparent. It took about a week to >> switch back to sam from acme. That time is certainly a function of how much >> I used sam in the past. >> >> I’m very grateful to still be using these tools. It’s a very personal thing >> but for someone who first used 6th Edition Unix, ed and the old shell, and >> used all the versions of Unix that followed, these tools, both acme and sam, >> rio and 8 1/2, are an improvement to all that proceeded them and followed >> them. >> >> Brantley Coile >
