Re: [9fans] python csp

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Uriel  wrote:
> Stackless is fairly well maintained and uptodate, it is also fairly
> close to the Limbo model, and it is used in production in some really
> big projects.
>
> Unfortunately it seems unlikely that it will ever make it to python
> mainline because Guido doesn't like it rather bizarre reasons ("It
> allows recursive programming, which is confusing" or some such is the

God forbid we think outside the box! I don't want anything to do with
that crazy recursion stuff.

> last I remember) *sigh*
>
> uriel
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 6:13 PM,   wrote:
>> hello
>>
>> i think somone pointed to this on 9fans days ago:
>>
>> www.stackless.com
>>
>> slds.
>>
>> gabi
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] small node

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 10:45 AM, maht  wrote:
>
>>
>> From the picture, the thing has USB. Gotta be a way to DIY ethernet or
>> wifi into it...
>>
>>
>
> http://ninetimes.cat-v.org/news/2008/12/24/1_New_driver_for_usb_ethernet_devices/
>

Hey, that's pretty cool

Re: [9fans] my /dev/time for Linux

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 6:29 AM, maht  wrote:
> nice one.
>
> Getting it upstream would be great. Another "you know Y that's in Linux now,
> it's from Plan9, but if you want Plan9 you know where to find it (unless
> it's down today)".
>
>

Actually, I got Ashwin Ganti's Plan 9 capability device accepted into
Greg K-H's staging tree. Should come with 2.6.29 as an experimental
option. I'm also working with the folks at glendix.org on getting
Linux to be binary compatible with Plan 9. We're always looking for
help, if you're interested.

Re: [9fans] new toy - gmap

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 6:44 PM, Bruce Ellis  wrote:
> That seems to be endemic. People putting things on top of other
> things. Which reminds me that people aren't wearing enough hats!

There's a committee for putting things on top of other things, isn't there?

>
> brucee
>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 7:37 AM, Akshat Kumar
>  wrote:
>> I just wanted to see it in a box with blue borders amidst other multi-colored
>> boxes with blue borders, atop the sea of grey.
>>
>> 2009/3/13 Steve Simon :
>>> It just generates a gmap map or satellite image of the place you name,
>>> try http://maps.google.com to see a demo.
>>
>> ak
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] new toy - gmap

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 7:11 PM, David Leimbach  wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 3:59 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 6:44 PM, Bruce Ellis 
>> wrote:
>> > That seems to be endemic. People putting things on top of other
>> > things. Which reminds me that people aren't wearing enough hats!
>>
>> There's a committee for putting things on top of other things, isn't
>> there?
>
> Perhaps we can secure a government grant to fund the study of putting things
> on things.

The Minister for Home Affairs, who is wearing a striking organza dress
in pink tulle, with matching pearls and a diamante collar necklace,
has promised to sacrifice his project of building 88,000 million
billion houses to give us funding.

>>
>> >
>> > brucee
>> >
>> > On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 7:37 AM, Akshat Kumar
>> >  wrote:
>> >> I just wanted to see it in a box with blue borders amidst other
>> >> multi-colored
>> >> boxes with blue borders, atop the sea of grey.
>> >>
>> >> 2009/3/13 Steve Simon :
>> >>> It just generates a gmap map or satellite image of the place you name,
>> >>> try http://maps.google.com to see a demo.
>> >>
>> >> ak
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] new toy - gmap

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 7:26 PM, Bruce Ellis  wrote:
> More fish!

You've got a pet halibut?

>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 10:23 AM, LiteStar numnums  wrote:
>> The project will still go down as one of bitter in fighting, name calling,
>> ego stroking, chaos wrapped up in a book you need to purchase for $250 USD
>> (plus tax & shipping) in order to put things...
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 7:17 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 7:11 PM, David Leimbach  wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 3:59 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 6:44 PM, Bruce Ellis 
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >> > That seems to be endemic. People putting things on top of other
>>> >> > things. Which reminds me that people aren't wearing enough hats!
>>> >>
>>> >> There's a committee for putting things on top of other things, isn't
>>> >> there?
>>> >
>>> > Perhaps we can secure a government grant to fund the study of putting
>>> > things
>>> > on things.
>>>
>>> The Minister for Home Affairs, who is wearing a striking organza dress
>>> in pink tulle, with matching pearls and a diamante collar necklace,
>>> has promised to sacrifice his project of building 88,000 million
>>> billion houses to give us funding.
>>>
>>> >>
>>> >> >
>>> >> > brucee
>>> >> >
>>> >> > On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 7:37 AM, Akshat Kumar
>>> >> >  wrote:
>>> >> >> I just wanted to see it in a box with blue borders amidst other
>>> >> >> multi-colored
>>> >> >> boxes with blue borders, atop the sea of grey.
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >> 2009/3/13 Steve Simon :
>>> >> >>> It just generates a gmap map or satellite image of the place you
>>> >> >>> name,
>>> >> >>> try http://maps.google.com to see a demo.
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >> ak
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >
>>> >> >
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> And in the "Only Prolog programmers will find this funny" department:
>>
>> Q: How many Prolog programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
>>
>> A: No.
>>  -- Ovid
>>
>>    "By cosmic rule, as day yields night, so winter summer, war peace, plenty
>> famine. All things change. Air penetrates the lump of myrrh, until the
>> joining bodies die and rise again in smoke called incense."
>>
>>    "Men do not know how that which is drawn in different directions
>> harmonises with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon
>> opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre."
>>
>>    "This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god
>> or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire,
>> kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures"
>> -- Heraclitus
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] new toy - gmap

[J.R. Mauro]

Just to let you know, the current version as of a few minutes ago
works for me. Thanks!

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 7:54 PM, Steve Simon  wrote:
> Pick up the new code, it reads the key from /lib/gmapkey
> and gets the longditude and latitude the correct way round
> (as several people have told me.
>
> then try
>
>        gmap -s
>
> and wave your arm out fo the window.
>
> -Steve
>
>

Re: [9fans] log oversight

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:18 PM, ron minnich  wrote:
> note that those files are append-only.
>
> logs on unix are writeable by everyone:
> [rminn...@panzer ~]$ logger -p kern.err "JUNK"
> [rminn...@panzer ~]$ sudo tail -f /var/log/messages
>
> Mar 16 04:15:03 Panzer rminnich: JUNK
>

This didn't work on my linux box. I actually have:

% ls -l /var/log/messages
-rw--- 1 root root 960355 2009-03-15 23:51 /var/log/messages

>
> ron
>
>

Re: [9fans] log oversight

[J.R. Mauro]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 2:30 AM, ron minnich  wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 8:55 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:18 PM, ron minnich  wrote:
>>> note that those files are append-only.
>>>
>>> logs on unix are writeable by everyone:
>>> [rminn...@panzer ~]$ logger -p kern.err "JUNK"
>>> [rminn...@panzer ~]$ sudo tail -f /var/log/messages
>>>
>>> Mar 16 04:15:03 Panzer rminnich: JUNK
>>>
>>
>> This didn't work on my linux box. I actually have:
>>
>> % ls -l /var/log/messages
>> -rw--- 1 root root 960355 2009-03-15 23:51 /var/log/messages
>>
>
>
> what didn't work? did you try the logger command?
>

Yep. Nothing happened to the logs.

> ron
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on Routers?

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Devon H. O'Dell  wrote:
> 2009/3/24 Rahul Murmuria :
>> I was poking around for what it would take to get there. I found
>> this[1]. I am basically looking to have a way to do routing using Plan
>> 9. You can already do that on any standard Linux using Quagga[2] based
>> on GNU Zebra.
>>
>> Maybe there is a filesystem that exposes the kernel routing table to
>> user space for certain routing algorithm scripts to hack upon?
>>
>> My objective is to be able to implement a new routing protocol on a
>> router created using a standard computer with multiple NIC cards,
>> maybe on a model P2P type network? I also would love to see what
>> having /net on a router would enable us to do.
>>
>> Has anyone any experience with using Plan 9 on routers?
>
> Are you a student? This kind of stuff has interested me quite a bit in
> Plan 9 (though more from a packet classification standpoint -- read:
> firewalling), and it seems like a nifty project for GSoC.
>
> As far as I'm aware, there is nothing similar to the OSPF/BGP/RIP
> support directly in Plan 9. I am pretty sure Charles has written a RIP
> daemon that is in sources somewhere.

RIP is fairly simplistic, I wonder if Plan 9 exposes enough
information via /net to actually implement OSPF. You need to know
load-balancing, bandwidth and "distance" metrics that RIP doesn't care
about.

>
> --Devon
>
>> --
>> Rahul Murmuria
>>
>> [1] 
>> http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1102834,00.html
>> [2] http://www.quagga.net/docs/quagga.html#SEC3
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on Routers?

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Rahul Murmuria  wrote:
> Hi Devon!
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Devon H. O'Dell 
> wrote:
>>
>> Are you a student? This kind of stuff has interested me quite a bit in
>> Plan 9 (though more from a packet classification standpoint -- read:
>> firewalling), and it seems like a nifty project for GSoC.
>>
>
> Yes, I am a student. I qualify for GSoC but I was planning not to apply, as
> from where I see it, that brings in restrictions to the independence of
> thought. I am open to applying though, if this is a good enough (and small
> enough) idea for SoC.
>
>> As far as I'm aware, there is nothing similar to the OSPF/BGP/RIP
>> support directly in Plan 9. I am pretty sure Charles has written a RIP
>> daemon that is in sources somewhere.
>>
>
> /net on routers is something I have wanted for sometime now too. I am a
> member of the Glendix project (http://www.glendix.org) and have discussed
> the same ideas for Glendix recently.
>
> I was told that Inferno has ventured into such waters before. Are you sure
> there in no information on anyone trying Plan 9 on/as a Router?
>
>> --Devon
>>
>>
>
> @ Mauro
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 3:51 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>> RIP is fairly simplistic, I wonder if Plan 9 exposes enough
>> information via /net to actually implement OSPF. You need to know
>> load-balancing, bandwidth and "distance" metrics that RIP doesn't care
>> about.
>
> I am willing to explore this area. Maybe if /net reaches every router, such
> metrics can be retrieved and exchanged between the routers like other router
> OSes do (or maybe better than they already do) ?
>
> I am planning to understand JUNOS using the documentation on their website,
> but I am not sure if I want to go though the CCNA books for Cisco IOS like
> you recommended. I have hardly any prior experience in the area, but initial
> design info finds me inclining towards JUNOS more.

As long as you understand what you need to implement the protocols,
the rest will fall into place. OSPF's spec is freely available, as is
RIP and BGP. There are some Cisco protocols that AFAIK are closed, but
I doubt you would need them.

>
> --
> Rahul Murmuria
>
>

Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 07:54:57PM -0500, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote:
> One nice thing about drawterm is it lets you export the iphone's
> interfaces to Plan 9 -- that could lead to much more interesting

I doubt you'll be able to do that with the insane restrictions Apple puts on
officially-sanctioned apps. You'd have to work via the iPhone jailbreak to
expose anything other than a very small, sandboxed directory on the phone via
drawterm.

> possibilities beyond typing at the shell.  Probably a better approach
> would be to look at providing an octopus client for iPhone though...
> 
>   -eric
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 7:39 PM, Federico G. Benavento
>  wrote:
> > ok, you can't compare porting inferno to the ds with drawterm for the iphone
> > drawterm is an app to get to a Plan 9 server, inferno is a self contained
> > operating system where you can get the advantage of writing your
> > own apps for it.
> >
> > for this port to be useful you need 1) an iphone;  2) a cpu server to cpu
> > and 3) that killer app that makes want to drawterm from the iphone.
> >
> > I think writing that killer app, whatever that is makes more sense.
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Devon H. O'Dell  
> > wrote:
> >> 2009/3/25 Federico G. Benavento :
> >>> do we need drawterm for the iphone? is anyone going to use it?
> >>>
> >>> I mean, it's a tiny screen, typing on handhelds sucks, plus is not
> >>> that there is killer app Plan 9 has that  you _must_ run.
> >>>
> >>> am I forgetting something obvious?
> >>
> >> Tiny screen, but reasonable resolution. Should find out who put it on
> >> the ideas page for GSoC; it wasn't me (so clearly somebody is
> >> interested). Besides, look at the DS port. Smaller screens, lower
> >> resolution (even combined, I think). Whether it's novelty or not isn't
> >> for me to say, but I can see how it would be useful.
> >>
> >> --dho
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Federico G. Benavento
> >
> >
> 

-- 
J.R. Mauro

()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail 
/\  www.asciiribbon.org   - against Microsoft attachments

Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Eric Van Hensbergen  wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 1:04 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 07:54:57PM -0500, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote:
>>> One nice thing about drawterm is it lets you export the iphone's
>>> interfaces to Plan 9 -- that could lead to much more interesting
>>
>> I doubt you'll be able to do that with the insane restrictions Apple puts on
>> officially-sanctioned apps. You'd have to work via the iPhone jailbreak to
>> expose anything other than a very small, sandboxed directory on the phone via
>> drawterm.
>>
>
> That makes zero sense.  As per the VNC discussion, there's already
> precedent for exporting screen and interfaces.

No, it makes perfect sense, if you actually know that there are VNC
clients on the phone, but not servers. You should look these things up
before saying I'm talking nonsense. Apple is fanatical about
controlling access to resources on the phone, even from apps that run
on the phone. The result of writing drawterm with Apple's SDK will be
a very crippled vnc/ssh type client.

> That does leave room for apple to restrict access to camera, location,
> orientation, etc. -- but I see no reason why they would.

Because it's Apple.

>
>         -eric
>
>

Re: [9fans] GSOC: Gitfs

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Mukhitdinov Manzur
 wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
>     I'm a cs student from Saint-Petersburg,Russia(sea-gull on #plan9-soc).
> I'm interested in your project of implementing Git file system
> for Plan9.
>     Implementing Gitfs when we have Hgfs[1] and hgc may seem odd to
> somebody,
> especially when Git doesn't have apparent advantages over mercury.
> But there are some benefits to community: as I'm new to Plan9/Inferno
> the more difficult task I get, the more and deeper I'll learn Plan9. And
> that means,
> the better and longer I can help to the community
> But I'll benefit no less than you: I'll learn miraculous Plan9,
> get friends and spend my time to something useful

If I remember correctly, someone made a FUSE filesystem that worked
with a git checkout. Its implementation may perhaps be helpful in
writing a 9P filesystem.

>
> I've some other ideas:
> - Something like Boost library for Limbo
> - Dis decompiler
>
> Comments are appreciated!
>
> Thanks, Manzur
>
> References:
>     1. http://www.ueber.net/hg/hgfs/files/last/README
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan9 from Outer Space strikes again

[J.R. Mauro]

I think the Glendix project should be renamed.

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 3:39 PM, yy  wrote:
> I just found this:
> http://www.bluewaterprod.com/news/Plan_9_is_back_12-17-08.php and
> wanted to share it with you.
>
>
> --
> - yiyus || JGL .
>
>

Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:51 PM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
>> Legitimate iPhone apps can access the screen, camera, accelerometer,
>> gps and a portion of the filesystem. One could technically write a
>> drawterm that "polled" for instructions from a remote CPU server and
>> act on the local devices.
>>
>> Not sure if Apple would construe this as "executing remote code
>> fetched through a web service" - that's for a lawyer to discuss - but
>> technically speaking, it is *possible* to remotely control and receive
>> input from the iPhone screen, camera, accelerometer, gps etc; all
>> using the official SDK.
>
> seems like a risk not worth taking.  i'd hate to have a project
> fail due to a forseeable problem.

There is always the possibility of leveraging the jailbreak, which
would also let us possibly do something better than just drawterm.
FUSE was ported to the darwin kernel, I don't see why 9P can't be. But
I doubt google would want anything to do with that.

Still a decent side project for someone who really wants to do
iPhone+Plan 9 development.

>
> - erik
>
>

Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 11:40 PM, ron minnich  wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 8:02 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>
>> There is always the possibility of leveraging the jailbreak, which
>> would also let us possibly do something better than just drawterm.
>> FUSE was ported to the darwin kernel, I don't see why 9P can't be. But
>> I doubt google would want anything to do with that.
>>
>> Still a decent side project for someone who really wants to do
>> iPhone+Plan 9 development.
>
> maybe I'm missing something but ... why not just do this on the G-1? I
> mean, you've got a company (Apple) that you are afraid is going to
> view what you are doing as criminal, or you have a company with a fine
> that is designed to 3rd party apps. I realize the iPhone has some kind
> of "cool factor" going for it, but ... who needs this kind of problem?
>

Where or even what gets done isn't that important to me, I'm just
tossing ideas out. Drawterm on the iPhone would be nice for me, since
I have one, but I have no idea how many Plan 9 users have one. Nor do
I know how many have a G-1 for that matter.

In my experience, these 'wow-factor' apps for phones get a lot of
initial attention, but are never used seriously. Not to sound like a
Negative Nancy, but how much utility will everyone really get out of
such a port?

Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:01 AM, Eric Van Hensbergen  wrote:
> The fact that rio and/or acme have a limited usage model with such a device
> and/or multitouch in general is a shame -- wouldn't it be nice to fix that.

This is a very good point. As much as I like rio, I can't help but be
aggravated by it sometimes, and it would be nice to have someone take
a fresh look at interacting with it and possibly solve some of the
shortcomings.

>  Drawterm (or ports to devices like the DS) are not ends in themselves but a
> means to exploring new interface models, ideas, and applications.  Likewise
> I hope the student reaches beyond simple drawterm support and implements an
> example iPhone environment/app within Plan 9 that matches it's interface
> model better than rio.
>
> As far as counting who would use this, that seems misdirected - GSoc is for
> the students to learn and get interested in plan 9, not for the community to
> get work done.
>
>         -eric
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Mar 31, 2009, at 1:00 AM, Uriel  wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:57 AM, Tharaneedharan Vilwanathan
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> hi,
>>>
>>> sorry if i have missed any prior discussion, but i would like to
>>> mention that i am curious about this effort.
>>>
>>> to me, iphone (or similar device) seems to be an appropriate device
>>> that is small enough  to be a portable drawterm device (eventually it
>>> could become cheaper too). one can quickly connect it to a TV or a
>>> hybrid monitor and get a bigger display.
>>>
>>> i have tried this before in iphone with acme running in my mac:
>>>
>>> http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/12/modified-vnc-software-enables-remote-access-on-iphone/
>>
>> So, was acme usable with a touch screen as input? And does this mean
>> that VNC clients already provide the desired functionality?
>>
>>> so in my opinion, this is a good effort.
>>
>> I'm not sure how that conclusion follows from the rest of your email.
>> Can you clarify?
>>
>> Assuming that there are no overwhelming user interface issues (which
>> seems like a huge assumption to me), what actual useful functionality
>> would a drawterm port provide that vnc/ssh doesn't?
>>
>> I would remind people too that Google is going to *pay good money* for
>> this work, so I think it is reasonable to ask how worthy it is.
>>
>> Peace
>>
>> uriel
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Eric Van Hensbergen  wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 9:36 AM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:01 AM, Eric Van Hensbergen  
>> wrote:
>>> The fact that rio and/or acme have a limited usage model with such a device
>>> and/or multitouch in general is a shame -- wouldn't it be nice to fix that.
>>
>> This is a very good point. As much as I like rio, I can't help but be
>> aggravated by it sometimes, and it would be nice to have someone take
>> a fresh look at interacting with it and possibly solve some of the
>> shortcomings.
>>
>
> I think the key here is devices like the iPhone beg a different model
> -- rio and ACME were developed for graphical, mouse/keyboard setups
> (with relatively large screens I might add) -- smaller devices or
> devices with different models (like set top boxes or game consoles)
> really require a different set of tools/apps.  I think this is one of
> the things that was interesting about the Plan B approach -- different
> front-ends for similar back ends.  I doubt anyone wants to use the
> iphone as a developer workstation, but it might be nice to make it an
> additional screen for faces, or as the student points out and
> additional user-interface to someone's work environment.
>
> As far as fixing rio and ACME, I would urge anyone looking at that to
> come up with a complementary solution as opposed to messing with the
> existing model.  I don't see any reason why alternative interfaces
> can't co-exist which support keyboard-only interaction (ron's smackme
> comes to mind as well as wmii's model) as well as multitouch on
> laptops (actually the iphone's new cut/paste model might work for
> multitouch trackpads -- and while not as natural as the existing
> chording method might make ACME useable when one finds oneself without
> a three button mouse handy).  Another avenue to pursue is looking at
> using gestures to replace chords -- it seems like pinch and expand
> might be natural replacements for cut and paste.  I don't think the
> community or the system benefits form limiting our options (but lets
> keep them options -- I still prefer chording when possible ;)
>
>        -eric
>

Yes, that's sane. The interaction model depends very much on context,
and there is no one-size-fits-all interaction model. Being able to
switch models on the fly would also be nice.

Re: [9fans] what features would you like in a shell?

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 11:29 AM, noagbodjivictor
 wrote:
> hello,
>
> I'm a undergrade CS student doing a project for my introductory
> operating systems class. my team wants to write a simple shell from
> scratch.
>
> one idea we have found so far is the following. the shell will record
> all the programs it has run. whenever a program goes awry and is
> killed by the kernel. the shell will reload it.
>
> what do you think of it?

Bad idea. What if I expect it to die and maybe want to debug it before
running it again? What if the kernel killed it because it was hogging
resources? Respawning something that constantly gets killed will
probably render the machine unusable. What if the program dies really
quickly? The shell could get caught in a very tight loop you can't
interrupt, and the user winds up killing the shell itself and opening
a new one (after getting really aggravated).

I suppose you could make it optional, but then again, why can't the
user just restart the process by hand?

>
> also, we know there are many many shells out there. and our professor
> would not like us to write from scratch. we wanted because it provides
> much exercise. but we certainly don't know about all the shells out
> there.
>
> so I'm writing to get your opinions. maybe there are thing that people
> implement themselves but want included in the shell itself? or just
> something they want implemented?
>
> thanks a lot in advance for your help.
>
>

Re: [9fans] J9P/StyxLib

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 11:19:08PM +0300, Alex Efros wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 10:02:04PM +0200, Bernd R. Fix wrote:
> > 2.) You have an OS project with a different, incompatible license
> > and want to include a GPL project or base some work on it.
> > 
> > I am sure that this problem occurred many times in the past; maybe
> > there even exists a 'best practice' approach how to deal with this.
> > 
> > To be honest: I don't think that the first case is an argument against
> > the GPL - not for me. I am more worried about the second case.
> > 
> > So my question to you licensing experts: is there a better license that
> > follows my basic statement (see above) and allows better "integration"
> > into other OS licenses? If I have a better license model, I am certainly
> > willing to change to it.
> 
> For libraries it usually solved using LGPL instead of GPL.
> 
> 
> P.S. As for me, I'd like to try to make world a little better, and don't
> bother much about reusing my code in commercial projects or even removing
> my name from sources - so I use Public Domain for all my applications and
> libraries.
> 
> GPL is a virus, designed to war against commercial software. That's not my 
> war.

Though this is certainly rms's intention, I'm not aware of a license that
guarantees you get modifications to your source code back, and that is important
to me as well. I don't really want people to improve on my ideas without helping
me in the process, and there are a lot of people will do just that.

So while the "forcible sharing" of the GPL is kind of fascist, I don't see any
other way to have the guarantee that improvements to your code by others are 
made
available to you.

> 
> -- 
>   WBR, Alex.
> 

Re: [9fans] J9P/StyxLib

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 04:42:18PM -0400, J.R. Mauro wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 11:19:08PM +0300, Alex Efros wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 10:02:04PM +0200, Bernd R. Fix wrote:
> > > 2.) You have an OS project with a different, incompatible license
> > > and want to include a GPL project or base some work on it.
> > > 
> > > I am sure that this problem occurred many times in the past; maybe
> > > there even exists a 'best practice' approach how to deal with this.
> > > 
> > > To be honest: I don't think that the first case is an argument against
> > > the GPL - not for me. I am more worried about the second case.
> > > 
> > > So my question to you licensing experts: is there a better license that
> > > follows my basic statement (see above) and allows better "integration"
> > > into other OS licenses? If I have a better license model, I am certainly
> > > willing to change to it.
> > 
> > For libraries it usually solved using LGPL instead of GPL.
> > 
> > 
> > P.S. As for me, I'd like to try to make world a little better, and don't
> > bother much about reusing my code in commercial projects or even removing
> > my name from sources - so I use Public Domain for all my applications and
> > libraries.
> > 
> > GPL is a virus, designed to war against commercial software. That's not my 
> > war.
> 
> Though this is certainly rms's intention, I'm not aware of a license that
> guarantees you get modifications to your source code back, and that is 
> important
> to me as well. I don't really want people to improve on my ideas without 
> helping
> me in the process, and there are a lot of people will do just that.
> 
> So while the "forcible sharing" of the GPL is kind of fascist, I don't see any
> other way to have the guarantee that improvements to your code by others are 
> made
> available to you.
> 
> > 
> > -- 
> > WBR, Alex.
> > 

D'oh. I *do* know a license that does this: the Vim License. You aren't forced
to distribute source code, but if the original author wants to get it, you have
to provide it free of charge. Similar to the GPL, but less nasty and less
idealistic.

Re: [9fans] J9P/StyxLib

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 02:47:29PM -0600, Latchesar Ionkov wrote:
> Are you sure there will be any improvements of your code if nobody
> wants to use it because of the license?

Ok, this is flamebait, but...

>From what I've seen, it works; there are plenty of projects under the GPL that
get contributions. Of course you can argue the merits of any of them.

But if you don't like the license, it's very simple: don't use it. And as I
remembered, there are alternative licenses with similar intent, like the Vim
license.

> 
> Lucho
> 
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 2:42 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 11:19:08PM +0300, Alex Efros wrote:
> >> Hi!
> >>
> >> On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 10:02:04PM +0200, Bernd R. Fix wrote:
> >> > 2.) You have an OS project with a different, incompatible license
> >> >     and want to include a GPL project or base some work on it.
> >> >
> >> >     I am sure that this problem occurred many times in the past; maybe
> >> >     there even exists a 'best practice' approach how to deal with this.
> >> >
> >> > To be honest: I don't think that the first case is an argument against
> >> > the GPL - not for me. I am more worried about the second case.
> >> >
> >> > So my question to you licensing experts: is there a better license that
> >> > follows my basic statement (see above) and allows better "integration"
> >> > into other OS licenses? If I have a better license model, I am certainly
> >> > willing to change to it.
> >>
> >> For libraries it usually solved using LGPL instead of GPL.
> >>
> >>
> >> P.S. As for me, I'd like to try to make world a little better, and don't
> >> bother much about reusing my code in commercial projects or even removing
> >> my name from sources - so I use Public Domain for all my applications and
> >> libraries.
> >>
> >> GPL is a virus, designed to war against commercial software. That's not my 
> >> war.
> >
> > Though this is certainly rms's intention, I'm not aware of a license that
> > guarantees you get modifications to your source code back, and that is 
> > important
> > to me as well. I don't really want people to improve on my ideas without 
> > helping
> > me in the process, and there are a lot of people will do just that.
> >
> > So while the "forcible sharing" of the GPL is kind of fascist, I don't see 
> > any
> > other way to have the guarantee that improvements to your code by others 
> > are made
> > available to you.
> >
> >>
> >> --
> >>                       WBR, Alex.
> >>
> >
> >
> 

Re: [9fans] J9P/StyxLib

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 11:11:28PM +0200, Uriel wrote:
> Actually the GPL doesn't do what you guys claim it to do, it doesn't
> require people to share back with you changes to your code, it only
> requires them to release their changes if they *redistribute* their
> code.

Trying to enforce private use of licensed code is impossible. It's like trying
to prevent someone from making C4 in their home and keeping it in their
basement. The approach every license I've seen takes is a "don't ask, don't
tell" policy, which is as effectual as a license can get.

> 
> Anyway, licenses are an annoyance and a waste of everyone's time and
> resources. I agree with Alex that the best is Public Domain, or at
> least BSD/MIT/ISC-style license, which is as close as you can get to
> Public Domain while retaining copyright.

Unfortunately, as a race, we have not yet come to the agreement of throwing
every lawyer on the face of the earth into a volcano

> 
> Peace
> 
> uriel
> 
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 10:46 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 04:42:18PM -0400, J.R. Mauro wrote:
> >> On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 11:19:08PM +0300, Alex Efros wrote:
> >> > Hi!
> >> >
> >> > On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 10:02:04PM +0200, Bernd R. Fix wrote:
> >> > > 2.) You have an OS project with a different, incompatible license
> >> > >     and want to include a GPL project or base some work on it.
> >> > >
> >> > >     I am sure that this problem occurred many times in the past; maybe
> >> > >     there even exists a 'best practice' approach how to deal with this.
> >> > >
> >> > > To be honest: I don't think that the first case is an argument against
> >> > > the GPL - not for me. I am more worried about the second case.
> >> > >
> >> > > So my question to you licensing experts: is there a better license that
> >> > > follows my basic statement (see above) and allows better "integration"
> >> > > into other OS licenses? If I have a better license model, I am 
> >> > > certainly
> >> > > willing to change to it.
> >> >
> >> > For libraries it usually solved using LGPL instead of GPL.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > P.S. As for me, I'd like to try to make world a little better, and don't
> >> > bother much about reusing my code in commercial projects or even removing
> >> > my name from sources - so I use Public Domain for all my applications and
> >> > libraries.
> >> >
> >> > GPL is a virus, designed to war against commercial software. That's not 
> >> > my war.
> >>
> >> Though this is certainly rms's intention, I'm not aware of a license that
> >> guarantees you get modifications to your source code back, and that is 
> >> important
> >> to me as well. I don't really want people to improve on my ideas without 
> >> helping
> >> me in the process, and there are a lot of people will do just that.
> >>
> >> So while the "forcible sharing" of the GPL is kind of fascist, I don't see 
> >> any
> >> other way to have the guarantee that improvements to your code by others 
> >> are made
> >> available to you.
> >>
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> >                     WBR, Alex.
> >> >
> >
> > D'oh. I *do* know a license that does this: the Vim License. You aren't 
> > forced
> > to distribute source code, but if the original author wants to get it, you 
> > have
> > to provide it free of charge. Similar to the GPL, but less nasty and less
> > idealistic.
> >
> >
> 

Re: [9fans] a bit OT, programming style question

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Eris Discordia  wrote:
> I see. But seriously, readline does handle bindings and line editing for
> bash. Except it's a function instead of a program and you think it's a bad
> idea.

The man page *does* say it's too big and slow. So does the bash
manpage. And getting readline to do anything sane is about as fun as
screwing around with a terminfo file.

>
> --On Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10:31 PM +0800 sqweek  wrote:
>
>> 2009/4/7 Eris Discordia :
>
> Keyboard
> bindings for example; why couldn't they be handled by a program that
> just does keyboard bindings + line editing, and writes finalized lines
> to the shell.
>>>
>>> Like... readline(3)?
>>
>>  No.
>> -sqweek
>>
>
>
>
> --On Tuesday, April 07, 2009 8:09 AM -0700 ron minnich 
> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 12:28 AM, Eris Discordia
>>  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Like... readline(3)?
>>
>> one hopes not.
>>
>> ron
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] a bit OT, programming style question

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Eris Discordia  wrote:
>> The man page *does* say it's too big and slow. So does the bash
>> manpage. And getting readline to do anything sane is about as fun as
>> screwing around with a terminfo file.
>
> A bad implementation is not a bad design. And, in fact, the badness of the
> implementation is even questionable in the light of bash's normal behavior
> or the working .inputrc files I've been using for some time.

Behavior is not indicative of good design. It just means that the
bandaids heaped upon bash (and X11, and...) make it work acceptably.

Try env | wc -l in bash. Now tell me why that value is so big.

>
> Anyway, thanks for the info.
>
> --On Tuesday, April 07, 2009 3:57 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro" 
> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Eris Discordia 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I see. But seriously, readline does handle bindings and line editing for
>>> bash. Except it's a function instead of a program and you think it's a
>>> bad idea.
>>
>> The man page *does* say it's too big and slow. So does the bash
>> manpage. And getting readline to do anything sane is about as fun as
>> screwing around with a terminfo file.
>>
>>>
>>> --On Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10:31 PM +0800 sqweek 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> 2009/4/7 Eris Discordia :
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Keyboard
>>>>>>> bindings for example; why couldn't they be handled by a program that
>>>>>>> just does keyboard bindings + line editing, and writes finalized
>>>>>>> lines to the shell.
>>>>>
>>>>> Like... readline(3)?
>>>>
>>>>  No.
>>>> -sqweek
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --On Tuesday, April 07, 2009 8:09 AM -0700 ron minnich
>>>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 12:28 AM, Eris Discordia
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Like... readline(3)?
>>>>
>>>> one hopes not.
>>>>
>>>> ron
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] a bit OT, programming style question

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Eris Discordia  wrote:
>> Try env | wc -l in bash. Now tell me why that value is so big.
>
>> [r...@host ~]# env | wc -l
>>        37
>> [r...@host ~]#
>
> Is that very high? I don't even know if it is or how it would mean anything
> bad (or good for that matter) assuming it were high. Not to mention, it's a
> very bad metric. Because:
>
>> [r...@host ~]# env | wc -c
>>        1404
>> [r...@host ~]#
>
> Most of it in the 19 lines for one TERMCAP variable. Strictly a relic of the
> past kept with all good intentions: backward compatibility, and heeding the
> diversity of hardware and configuration that still exists out there. 5 of
> the other 18 lines are completely specific to my installation. That leaves
> us with 13 short lines.

Grumble... s/env/set

And then you see the guts of bash spill out.

>
> Quite a considerable portion of UNIX-like systems, FreeBSD in this case, is
> the way it is not because the developers are stupid, rather because they
> have a "constituency" to tend to. They aren't carefree researchers with high
> ambitions.

I leveled no claims against *BSD or Linux. I'm simply trying to point
out that bash is utter garbage, as its own man page indicates.

>
> --On Tuesday, April 07, 2009 11:04 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro" 
> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Eris Discordia 
>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The man page *does* say it's too big and slow. So does the bash
>>>> manpage. And getting readline to do anything sane is about as fun as
>>>> screwing around with a terminfo file.
>>>
>>> A bad implementation is not a bad design. And, in fact, the badness of
>>> the implementation is even questionable in the light of bash's normal
>>> behavior or the working .inputrc files I've been using for some time.
>>
>> Behavior is not indicative of good design. It just means that the
>> bandaids heaped upon bash (and X11, and...) make it work acceptably.
>>
>> Try env | wc -l in bash. Now tell me why that value is so big.
>>
>>>
>>> Anyway, thanks for the info.
>>>
>>> --On Tuesday, April 07, 2009 3:57 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro"
>>>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Eris Discordia
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I see. But seriously, readline does handle bindings and line editing
>>>>> for bash. Except it's a function instead of a program and you think
>>>>> it's a bad idea.
>>>>
>>>> The man page *does* say it's too big and slow. So does the bash
>>>> manpage. And getting readline to do anything sane is about as fun as
>>>> screwing around with a terminfo file.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --On Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10:31 PM +0800 sqweek 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> 2009/4/7 Eris Discordia :
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Keyboard
>>>>>>>>> bindings for example; why couldn't they be handled by a program
>>>>>>>>> that just does keyboard bindings + line editing, and writes
>>>>>>>>> finalized lines to the shell.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Like... readline(3)?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  No.
>>>>>> -sqweek
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --On Tuesday, April 07, 2009 8:09 AM -0700 ron minnich
>>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 12:28 AM, Eris Discordia
>>>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Like... readline(3)?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> one hopes not.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ron
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] extensions of "interest"

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 1:25 PM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
> On Thu Apr  9 13:19:11 EDT 2009, rminn...@gmail.com wrote:
>> www.pdl.cmu.edu/posix
>>
>> statlite()
>
> the statlite man page is itself lightweight, being available
> on the web in pdf form.

And MS doc! There's a common Unix-y file format.

>
> - erik
>
>

Re: [9fans] extensions of "interest"

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 1:48 PM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
> On Thu Apr  9 13:44:50 EDT 2009, mirtchov...@gmail.com wrote:
>> i propose an extension to HTTP (call it HTTPeeLite) which allows me to
>> specify in my request to that webpage the format in which i prefer to
>> receive the man page. a 'setup' exchange can be sent beforehand to
>> establish the available types of documentation (.doc, .pdf, .tex,
>> .rtf, etc).
>
> or you could refrain from making the web any worse by just
> providing the document in ... oh, what's that archane format ...
> right, html.  if i recall correctly, it's the standard for web content.
>
> ☺
>
> by the way, this is an absolute gem from sutoc
>
> "handles are not inherently portable.  however, between like
> architechtures and software operating system support versions
> things just might work out.
>
> fills me with optimism.


 Almost as cheery as alloca() and gets(),  another fine pair of
functions we should all use more often :)

>
> - erik
>
>

Re: [9fans] extensions of "interest"

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 3:05 PM, maht  wrote:
> andrey mirtchovski wrote:
>>
>> i propose an extension to HTTP (call it HTTPeeLite) which allows me to
>> specify in my request to that webpage the format in which i prefer to
>> receive the man page. a 'setup' exchange can be sent beforehand to
>> establish the available types of documentation (.doc, .pdf, .tex,
>> .rtf, etc).
>>
>>
>>
>
> Already part of HTTP
>
> Accept: application/msword; q=1, application/pdf;
> q=0.5,application/x-troff-ms; q=0.3
>
> q is the level of preference, you'll get word docs first
>
>

Wow. Could it get any worse?

Re: [9fans] a bit OT, programming style question

[J.R. Mauro]

> No, it's very likely bigger. wc -l is lines of course, and I'm
> guessing each line is more than 1 character. However,
>
> $ set | wc -l
> 64
>
> I don't quite get that locally.

It only starts to balloon once you begin customizing bash. I'm not
sure how rc handles functions, but the nice thing about zsh is that it
compiles them to bytecode instead of this insanity that bash employs.

Re: [9fans] extensions of "interest"

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 3:22 PM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
>> > Already part of HTTP
>> >
>> > Accept: application/msword; q=1, application/pdf;
>> > q=0.5,application/x-troff-ms; q=0.3
>> >
>> > q is the level of preference, you'll get word docs first
>> >
>> >
>>
>> Wow. Could it get any worse?
>
> yes.  just read a few lines further in the rfc and note that
> there's also a "level" modifier.  it's not clear to me what
> level is supposed to do from their example.
>
>       Accept: text/*;q=0.3, text/html;q=0.7, text/html;level=1,
>                  text/html;level=2;q=0.4, */*;q=0.5
>

I took a look at this page:
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html

And it seems to suggest that "level" is for picking between text/html
and text/html [sic]

Re: [9fans] a bit OT, programming style question

[J.R. Mauro]

>
> I prefer the cadillac of shells (zsh) & the vw bug (rc).
>

I like this.

Re: [9fans] a bit OT, programming style question

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Eris Discordia  wrote:
>> It only starts to balloon once you begin customizing bash.
>
> Have you customized your bash by aliases as long as tens or hundreds of
> lines? Now is it bash's fault you have defined an alias for something that
> ought to be a script/program in its own right?

No, bash's completion system is what's responsible for line numbers in
the thousands.

>
> --On Thursday, April 09, 2009 3:34 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro" 
> wrote:
>
>>> No, it's very likely bigger. wc -l is lines of course, and I'm
>>> guessing each line is more than 1 character. However,
>>>
>>> $ set | wc -l
>>> 64
>>>
>>> I don't quite get that locally.
>>
>> It only starts to balloon once you begin customizing bash. I'm not
>> sure how rc handles functions, but the nice thing about zsh is that it
>> compiles them to bytecode instead of this insanity that bash employs.
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] a bit OT, programming style question

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 6:34 PM, Eris Discordia  wrote:
>> this is the "space-shuttle dichotomy."  it's a false one.  it's a
>> continuum. its ends are dangerous.
>
> So somewhere in the middle is the golden mean? I have no objections to that.
> *BSD systems very well represent a silver, if not a golden, mean--just my
> idea, of course.
>
>> it is interesting to me that some software manages to run off both
>> ends of this continuum at the same time.  in linux your termcap
>> from 1981 will still work, but software written to access /sys last
>> year is likely out-of-date.
>
> While I won't vouch for Linux as a good OS (user-land and kernel combined) I
> understand what you see as its eccentricity is merely a side-effect of
> openness. Tighten the development up and you get a BSD-style system
> (committer/contributor/maintainer/grunt/user highest-to-lowest ranking, with
> a demiurge position for Theo de Raadt). Tighten it even further up with
> in-ken shared among a core group of old-timers and thoroughbreds transmitted
> only to serious researchers and you get Plan 9.
>
> You are right, after all. It all lies on a continuum. Actually, more tightly
> regulated Linux distros such as Slackware readily demonstrate that; they
> easily beat all-out all-open distros like Fedora (whose existence is
> probably perceived at Red Hat as a big brainstorming project).
>
>> your insinuation that *bsd is a real serious system and plan 9 is
>> a research system doesn't make any historical sense to me.  they
>> both started as research systems.  i am not aware of any law that
>> prevents a system that started as a research project from becoming
>> a serious production system.
>
> What I am insinuating is more like this: any serious system will sooner or
> later have to grow warts and/or contract herpes. That's an unavoidable
> consequence of social life. If you do insist that Plan 9 has no warts, or
> far less warts than the average, or that it has never seen a cold sore on
> its upper lip then I'll happily conclude it has never lived socially. And I
> haven't really ever used Plan 9 or "been into it." The no-herpes indicator
> is that strong.

So you're saying that I don't have a social life since I've never gotten herpes?

I suppose from your demeanor that we can compare you to, say, Windows ME?

>
>> i know of many thousands of plan 9 systems in production right
>> now.
>
> Good for you. Honestly.
>
> --On Thursday, April 09, 2009 11:06 AM -0400 erik quanstrom
>  wrote:
>
>> On Thu Apr  9 10:48:08 EDT 2009, eris.discor...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>> Most of it in the 19 lines for one TERMCAP variable. Strictly a relic of
>>> the past kept with all good intentions: backward compatibility, and
>>> heeding
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> Quite a considerable portion of UNIX-like systems, FreeBSD in this case,
>>> is  the way it is not because the developers are stupid, rather because
>>> they  have a "constituency" to tend to. They aren't carefree researchers
>>> with  high ambitions.
>>
>> this is the "space-shuttle dichotomy."  it's a false one.  it's a
>> continuum. its ends are dangerous.
>>
>> on the one hand, if you change things, the new things are likely
>> to be buggy.  on the space shuttle, this is bad.  people die.
>>
>> on the other hand, systems are not perfect.  and if the problems
>> are not addressed, eventually the system will need to much fixing
>> and will be abandoned.
>>
>> yet bringing a new system on line is an even bigger risk.  everything
>> is new simultaneously.
>>
>> it is interesting to me that some software manages to run off both
>> ends of this continuum at the same time.  in linux your termcap
>> from 1981 will still work, but software written to access /sys last
>> year is likely out-of-date.
>>
>> your insinuation that *bsd is a real serious system and plan 9 is
>> a research system doesn't make any historical sense to me.  they
>> both started as research systems.  i am not aware of any law that
>> prevents a system that started as a research project from becoming
>> a serious production system.
>>
>> i know of many thousands of plan 9 systems in production right
>> now.
>>
>> - erik
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Rudolf Sykora  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've been thinking about 'well documented programs' and come across
> the 'noweb' program.
> Do you have any experience with literal programming and, particularly, noweb?
> (I noticed at least rsc seems to have played with it back in the year
> 2000. He programmed some scripts to use the system in Plan9...)
>
> Thanks
> Ruda
>

Just curious... what's the relation to Cweb and Ctangle (the ones Knuth uses)?

>From what I've heard of those (even from Knuth himself) is that
they're too ugly to use very much, and fits well with Knuth's style,
which is mostly the "giant blob of code" style.

Re: [9fans] security questions

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Devon H. O'Dell  wrote:
> 2009/4/16 erik quanstrom :
>> On Thu Apr 16 22:18:35 EDT 2009, devon.od...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> > i just stated what i thought the historical situation was.  the
>>> > point was only that changing direction will be difficult.
>>>
>>> This thread certainly proves that :)
>>
>> a 9fans thread proves nothing.
>
> Conceptually, anyway. Why is everyone always so hell-bent on hair-splitting? 
> :P

So much code, so much precision, so much specificity in dealing with
computers. It often spreads outside of the computational context and
into one's personality.

>
>> - erik
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Steve Simon  wrote:
> I cannot find the reference (sorry), but I read an interview with Ken
> (Thompson) a while ago.
>
> He was asked what he would change if he where working on plan9 now,
> and his reply was somthing like "I would add support for cloud computing".
>
> I admin I am not clear exactly what he meant by this.
>
> -Steve
>

He said that even with as smooth as Plan 9 makes things seem, you can
still tell that there's more than one computer involved, and that
sometimes that is a bit bad. IIRC he didn't mention anything in
particular.

I imagine process migration via /proc would make things pretty nice,
as well as a better way to move namespaces around than cpu does. In
general, the ability to really blur the line when you want to could be
better. Letting the computer blur the line when you want it to is also
something that I think would help. Plan 9 leaves it to the user to
pick where something should run, and then only on that machine. I'd
like to let the OS decide where to run certain things (and if that
computer isn't available, to pick another), and maybe when I go
someplace else, I'd like to bring that process back over to the
computer I'm at instead of talking to it over a (potentially slow)
network connection.

On a slightly related note, I talked with Vint Cerf recently, and his
major concern is a standardized way to have different clouds
communicate their capabilities and the services they're willing to
provide. I mentioned Plan 9's concepts, and we basically came to the
conclusion that we need Plan 9's ideas brought into every major OS, as
well as protocols to facilitate the non-homogeneous systems with a way
of communicating and cooperating.

Creating the tools is fairly straightforward. The tough nut to crack
is adoption (as we all know)

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:43 PM,   wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 08:16:40PM +0100, Steve Simon wrote:
>> I cannot find the reference (sorry), but I read an interview with Ken
>> (Thompson) a while ago.
>>
>> He was asked what he would change if he where working on plan9 now,
>> and his reply was somthing like "I would add support for cloud computing".
>>
>> I admin I am not clear exactly what he meant by this.
>
> My interpretation of cloud computing is precisely the split done by
> plan9 with terminal/CPU/FileServer: a UI runing on a this Terminal, with
> actual computing done somewhere about data stored somewhere.

The problem is that the CPU and Fileservers can't be assumed to be
static. Things can and will go down, move about, and become
temporarily unusable over time.

>
> Perhaps tools for migrating tasks or managing the thing. But I have the
> impression that the Plan 9 framework is the best for such a scheme.
> --
> Thierry Laronde (Alceste) 
>                 http://www.kergis.com/
> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
>
>

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Eris Discordia
 wrote:
>> even today on an average computer one has this articulation: a CPU (with
>> a FPU perhaps) ; tightly or loosely connected storage (?ATA or SAN) ;
>> graphical capacities (terminal) : GPU.
>
> It happens so that a reversal of specialization has really taken place, as
> Brian Stuart suggests. These "terminals" you speak of, GPUs, contain such
> vast untapped general processing capabilities that new uses and a new
> framework for using them are being defined: GPGPU and OpenCL.
>
> 
> 
>
> Right now, the GPU on my low-end video card takes a huge burden off of the
> CPU when leveraged by the right H.264 decoder. Two high definition AVC
> streams would significantly slow down my computer before I began using a
> CUDA-enabled decoder. Now I can easily play four in parallel.
>
> Similarly, the GPUs in PS3 boxes are being integrated into one of the
> largest loosely-coupled clusters on the planet.
>
> 
>
> Today, even a mere cellphone may contain enough processing power to run a
> low-traffic web server or a 3D video game. This processing power comes cheap
> so it is mostly wasted.

I can't find the link, but a recent article described someone's
efforts at CMU to develop what he calls "FAWN" Fast Array of Wimpy
Nodes. He basically took a bunch of eeePC boards and turned them into
a single computer.

The performance per watt of such an array was staggeringly higher than
a monster computer with Xeons and disks.

So hopefully in the future, we will be able to have more fine-grained
control over such things and fewer cycles will be wasted. It's time
people realized that CPU cycles are a bit like employment. Sure
UNemployment is a problem, but so is UNDERemployment, and the latter
is sometimes harder to gauge.

>
> I'd like to add to Brian Stuart's comments the point that previous
> specialization of various "boxes" is mostly disappearing. At some point in
> near future all boxes may contain identical or very similar powerful
> hardware--even probably all integrated into one "black box." So cheap that
> it doesn't matter if one or another hardware resource is wasted. To put to
> good use such a computational environment system software should stop
> incorporating a role-based model of various installations. All boxes, except
> the costliest most special ones, shall be peers.
>
> --On Friday, April 17, 2009 7:11 PM +0200 tlaro...@polynum.com wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:32:33AM -0500, blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>>>
>>> - First, the gap between the computational power at the
>>> terminal and the computational power in the machine room
>>> has shrunk to the point where it might no longer be significant.
>>> It may be worth rethinking the separation of CPU and terminal.
>>> For example, I'm typing this in acme running in a 9vx terminal
>>> booted using using a combined fs/cpu/auth server for the
>>> file system.  But I rarely use the cpu server capability of
>>> that machine.
>>
>> I'm afraid I don't quite agree with you.
>>
>> The definition of a terminal has changed. In Unix, the graphical
>> interface (X11) was a graphical variant of the text terminal interface,
>> i.e. the articulation (link, network) was put on the wrong place,
>> the graphical terminal (X11 server) being a kind of dumb terminal (a
>> little above a frame buffer), leaving all the processing, including the
>> handling of the graphical interface (generating the image,
>> administrating the UI, the menus) on the CPU (Xlib and toolkits run on
>> the CPU, not the Xserver).
>>
>> A terminal is not a no-processing capabilities (a dumb terminal):
>> it can be a full terminal, that is able to handle the interface,
>> the representation of data and commands (wandering in a menu shall
>> be terminal stuff; other users have not to be impacted by an user's
>> wandering through the UI).
>>
>> More and more, for administration, using light terminals, without
>> software installations is a way to go (less ressources in TCO). "Green"
>> technology. Data less terminals for security (one looses a terminal, not
>> the data), and data less for safety (data is centralized and protected).
>>
>>
>> Secondly, one is accustomed to a physical user being several distinct
>> logical users (accounts), for managing different tasks, or accessing
>> different kind of data.
>>
>> But (to my surprise), the converse is true: a collection of individuals
>> can be a single logical user, having to handle concurrently the very
>> same rw data. Terminals are then just distinct views of the same data
>> (imagine in a CAD program having different windows, different views of a
>> file ; this is the same, except that the windows are on different
>> terminals, with different "instances" of the logical user in front of
>> them).
>>
>> The processing is then better kept on a single CPU, handling the
>

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Eric Van Hensbergen  wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 2:43 PM,   wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 08:16:40PM +0100, Steve Simon wrote:
>>> I cannot find the reference (sorry), but I read an interview with Ken
>>> (Thompson) a while ago.
>>>
>>
>> My interpretation of cloud computing is precisely the split done by
>> plan9 with terminal/CPU/FileServer: a UI runing on a this Terminal, with
>> actual computing done somewhere about data stored somewhere.
>>
>
> That misses the dynamic nature which clouds could enable -- something
> we lack as well with our hardcoded /lib/ndb files -- there is no
> provisions for cluster resources coming and going (or failing) and no
> control facilities given for provisioning (or deprovisioning) those
> resources in a dynamic fashion.  Lucho's kvmfs (and to a certain
> extent xcpu) seem like steps in the right direction -- but IMHO more
> fundamental changes need to occur in the way we think about things.  I
> believe the file system interfaces While not focused on "cloud
> computing" in particular, the work we are doing under HARE aims to
> explore these directions further (both in the context of Plan
> 9/Inferno as well as broader themes involving other platforms).

Vidi also seems to be an attempt to make Venti work in such a dynamic
environment. IMHO, the assumption that computers are always connected
to the network was a fundamental mistake in Plan 9

>
> For hints/ideas/whatnot you can check the current pubs (more coming
> soon): http://www.research.ibm.com/hare
>
>      -eric
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 6:15 PM, ron minnich  wrote:
> if you want to look at checkpointing, it's worth going back to look at
> Condor, because they made it really work. There are a few interesting
> issues that you need to get right. You can't make it 50% of the way
> there; that's not useful. You have to hit all the bits -- open /tmp
> files, sockets, all of it. It's easy to get about 90% of it but the
> last bits are a real headache. Nothing that's come along since has
> really done the job (although various efforts claim to, you have to
> read the fine print).
>
> ron
>
>

Amen. Linux is currently having a seriously hard time getting C/R
working properly, just because of the issues you mention. The second
you mix in non-local resources, things get pear-shaped.

Unfortunately, even if it does work, it will probably not have the
kind of nice Plan 9-ish semantics I can envision it having.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 7:01 PM, ron minnich  wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:35 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>
>> Amen. Linux is currently having a seriously hard time getting C/R
>> working properly, just because of the issues you mention. The second
>> you mix in non-local resources, things get pear-shaped.
>
> it's not just non-local. It's local too.
>
> you are on a node. you open /etc/hosts. You C/R to another node with
> /etc/hosts open. What's that mean?
>
> You are on a node. you open a file in a ramdisk. Other programs have
> it open too. You are watching each other's writes. You C/R to another
> node with the file open. What's that mean?
>
> You are on a node. You have a pipe to a process on that node. You C/R
> to another node. Are you still talking at the end?
>
> And on and on. It's quite easy to get this stuff wrong. But true C/R
> requires that you get it right. The only system that would get this
> stuff mostly right that I ever used was Condor. (and, well the Apollo
> I think got it too, but that was a ways back).
>
> ron
>
>

Yeah, the problem's bigger than I thought (not surprising since I
didn't think much about it). I'm having a hard time figuring out how
Condor handles these issues. All I can see from the documentation is
that it gives you warnings.

I can imagine a lot of problems stemming from open files could be
resolved by first attempting to import the process's namespace at the
time of checkpoint and, upon that failing, using cached copies of the
file made at the time of checkpoint, which could be merged later.

But this still has the 90% problem you mentioned.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 10:39 PM, ron minnich  wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 7:06 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>
>> Yeah, the problem's bigger than I thought (not surprising since I
>> didn't think much about it). I'm having a hard time figuring out how
>> Condor handles these issues. All I can see from the documentation is
>> that it gives you warnings.
>
> the original condor just forwarded system calls back to the node it
> was started from. Thus all system calls were done in the context of
> the originating node and user.

"Best effort" is a good place to start.

>
>
>> But this still has the 90% problem you mentioned.
>
> it's just plain harder than it looks ...

Yeah. Every time I think of a way to address the corner cases, new ones crop up.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:37 PM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
>> I can imagine a lot of problems stemming from open files could be
>> resolved by first attempting to import the process's namespace at the
>> time of checkpoint and, upon that failing, using cached copies of the
>> file made at the time of checkpoint, which could be merged later.
>
> there's no guarantee to a process running in a conventional
> environment that files won't change underfoot.  why would
> condor extend a new guarantee?
>
> maybe i'm suffering from lack of vision, but i would think that
> to get to 100% one would need to think in terms of transactions
> and have a fully transactional operating system.
>
> - erik
>

There's a much lower chance of files changing out from you in a
conventional environment. If the goal is to make the "unconventional"
environment look and act like the conventional one, it will probably
have to try to do some of these things to be useful.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:56 PM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
>> Vidi also seems to be an attempt to make Venti work in such a dynamic
>> environment. IMHO, the assumption that computers are always connected
>> to the network was a fundamental mistake in Plan 9
>
> on the other hand, without this assumption, we would not have 9p.
> it was a real innovation to dispense with underpowered workstations
> with full adminstrative burdens.
>
> i think it is anachronistic to consider the type of mobile devices we
> have today.  in 1990 i knew exactly 0 people with a cell phone.  i had
> a toshiba orange screen laptop from work, but in those days a 9600
> baud vt100 was still a step up.
>
> ah, the good old days.

Of course it's easy to blame people for lack of vision 25 years later,
but with the rate at which computing moves in general, cell phones as
powerful as workstations should have been seen to be on their way
within the authors' lifetimes.

That said, Plan 9 was designed to furnish the needs of an environment
that might not ever have had iPhones and eeePCs attached to it even if
such things existed at the time it was made.

But I'll say that if anyone tries to solve these problems today, they
should not fall into the same trap, and look to the future. I hope
they'll consider how well their solution scales to computers so small
they're running through someone's bloodstream and so far away that
communication in one direction will take several light-minutes and be
subject to massive delay and loss.

It's not that ridiculous... teams are testing DTN, which hopes to
spread the internet to outer space, not only across this solar system,
but also to nearby stars. Now there's thinking forward!

>
> none of this is do detract from the obviously good idea of being
> able to carry around a working set and sync up with the main server
> later without some revision control junk.  in fact, i was excited to
> learn about fossil — i was under the impression from reading the
> paper that that's how it worked.
>
> speaking of vidi, do the vidi authors have an update on their work?
> i'd really like to hear how it is working out.
>
> - erik
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 12:16 AM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
>> But I'll say that if anyone tries to solve these problems today, they
>> should not fall into the same trap,  [...]
>
> yes.  forward thinking was just the thing that made multics
> what it is today.
>
> it is equally a trap to try to prognosticate too far in advance.
> one increases the likelyhood of failure and the chances of being
> dead wrong.
>
> - erik
>
>

I don't think what I outlined is too far ahead, and the issues
presented are all doable as long as a small bit of extra consideration
is made.

Keeping your eye only on the here and now was "just the thing" that
gave Unix a bunch of tumorous growths like sockets and X11, and made
Windows the wonderful piece of hackery it is.

I'm not suggesting we consider how to solve the problems we'll face
when we're flying through space and time in the TARDIS and shrinking
ourselves and our bioships down to molecular sizes to cure someone's
brain cancer. I'm talking about making something scale across
distances and magnitudes that we will come accustomed to in the next
five decades.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 12:16 AM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:37 PM, erik quanstrom  
>> wrote:
>> >> I can imagine a lot of problems stemming from open files could be
>> >> resolved by first attempting to import the process's namespace at the
>> >> time of checkpoint and, upon that failing, using cached copies of the
>> >> file made at the time of checkpoint, which could be merged later.
>> >
>> > there's no guarantee to a process running in a conventional
>> > environment that files won't change underfoot.  why would
>> > condor extend a new guarantee?
>> >
>> > maybe i'm suffering from lack of vision, but i would think that
>> > to get to 100% one would need to think in terms of transactions
>> > and have a fully transactional operating system.
>> >
>> > - erik
>> >
>>
>> There's a much lower chance of files changing out from you in a
>> conventional environment. If the goal is to make the "unconventional"
>> environment look and act like the conventional one, it will probably
>> have to try to do some of these things to be useful.
>
> * you can get the same effect by increasing the scale of your system.
>
> * the reason conventional systems work is not, in my opinion, because
> the collision window is small, but because one typically doesn't do
> conflicting edits to the same file.
>
> * saying that something "isn't likely" in an unquantifiable way is
> not a recipie for success in computer science, in my experience.
>
> - erik
>

I don't see how any of that relates to having to do more work to
ensure that C/R and process migration across nodes works and keeps
things as consistent as possible.

Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 1:47 AM,   wrote:
>> Every time I have to use something like
>> Linux or MS, I feel overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of it all.
>
> Possibly OT, my main beef with Linux and Windows is that they keep
> wanting to update themselves and the effort to "manage" these updates
> is enormous (less so with Ubuntu, but still great).  With Plan 9, I
> find I can control the updating process and do not feel I'm leaving
> myself exposed whenever I do.  Of course, the factors involved are
> very different, but I have a suspicion that with Windows and Linux one
> relinquishes control at too deep a level and the continual updates are
> a particularly visible case of this loss of control.
>
> ++L
>
>

The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something
using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have
explicit control over the update process.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 9:50 AM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
>> > * you can get the same effect by increasing the scale of your system.
>> >
>> > * the reason conventional systems work is not, in my opinion, because
>> > the collision window is small, but because one typically doesn't do
>> > conflicting edits to the same file.
>> >
>> > * saying that something "isn't likely" in an unquantifiable way is
>> > not a recipie for success in computer science, in my experience.
>> >
>> > - erik
>> >
>>
>> I don't see how any of that relates to having to do more work to
>> ensure that C/R and process migration across nodes works and keeps
>> things as consistent as possible.
>
> that's a fine and sensible goal.  but for the reasons above, i don't buy this
> line of reasoning.
>
> in a plan 9 system, the only files that i can think of which many processes
> have open at the same time are log files, append-only files.  just reopening
> log file would solve the problem.
>
> what is a specific case of contention you are thinking of?
>
> i'm not sure why editor is the case that's being bandied about.  two users
> don't usually edit the same file at the same time.  that case already
> does not work.  and i'm not sure why one would snapshot an editing
> session edit the file by other means and expect things to just work out.
> (and finally, acme, for example, does not keep the original file open.
> if open files are what get snapshotted, there would be not difference.)
>
> - erik
>
>

Ron mentioned a bunch before, like /etc/hosts or a pipe to another
process, and I would also suggest that things in /net and databases
could be a serious problem. If you migrate a process, how do you
ensure that the process is in a sane state on the new node?

I agree that generally only one process will be accessing a "normal"
file at once. I think an editor is not a good example, as you say.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 11:11 AM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
> On Sat Apr 18 11:08:21 EDT 2009, rminn...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 6:50 AM, erik quanstrom  
>> wrote:
>>
>> > in a plan 9 system, the only files that i can think of which many processes
>> > have open at the same time are log files, append-only files.  just 
>> > reopening
>> > log file would solve the problem.
>>
>> you're not thinking in terms of parallel applications if you make this
>> statement.
>
> you're right.  i assume you specificly mean hpc things.  the gulf between hpc
> and anything else is pretty big.
>
> - erik
>
>

Not necessarily. There are plenty of files that a normal process run
by any user will access which, upon migrating to another node, will be
different or will need to be restored. I gave examples in my earlier
email.

It's *not* just an HPC problem. It's a problem when you want to be
able to move process around even two computers on a home LAN.

Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:11 AM,   wrote:
>> The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something
>> using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have
>> explicit control over the update process.
>
> I was specifically omitting BSD ports, as they are in a different
> league.  The point I _was_ making is that one readily sacrifices
> control for convenience and that Linux and Windows users and those who
> assist them have to accept second-rate management and pay for it (I
> should know, I can see it when XP decides to use the GPRS link for its
> updating :-(
>
> Enough reason for me to prefer Plan 9 (and NetBSD, but I can only get
> my teeth into so many apples), if there weren't many more reasons.
>
> ++L
>

Seriously, give Gentoo portage a try. There is a sane package
management system for Linux.

Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Eris Discordia
 wrote:
> This thing about Windows updates, I think it's a non-issue. It's not like
> updates are mandatory and, as a matter of fact, there's rather fine-grained
> classification of them on Microsoft's knowledge base which can be used by
> any more or less experienced user to identify exactly what they need for
> addressing a specific glitch and to download and install that and only that.
> Periodic updates of Windows are really unnecessary and can be easily turned
> off. Cumulative updates (like the service packs), on the other hand, are
> often the best way to go.

That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could
never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart
more than once on a typical series of updates.

>
> What seems to actually be the problem for you is that you don't like being
> told there's a closed modification to your existing closed software. Well,
> that's the nature of binary-only proprietary for-profit software. The only
> way to get you to pay out of anything other than good will, which is a rare
> bird.

No, I think he's saying that Windows Update is a piece of fetid garbage.

>
> P.S. On open/free software mailing lists and forums justice is often not
> done to Windows, et al. Particularly, no meaningful alternative is presented
> for carrying out the important duties Windows currently performs for general
> computing, i.e. non-technical home and office applications which combined
> together were and continue to be the killer application of microcomputers.

Mac's updater is miles ahead of Windows Update, but both are still
crappy. I've given Linux to several "computer illiterates" and they
were immediately relieved that they could open up a single application
and search for any kind of software they needed, and updating it all
was done by that simple application. How simple is that!

The rate of failure of updates (compared to Windows update, which
would leave you with a completely unusable system every once in a
while) was also much lower.

>
> --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 8:11 AM +0200 lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote:
>
>>> The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something
>>> using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have
>>> explicit control over the update process.
>>
>> I was specifically omitting BSD ports, as they are in a different
>> league.  The point I _was_ making is that one readily sacrifices
>> control for convenience and that Linux and Windows users and those who
>> assist them have to accept second-rate management and pay for it (I
>> should know, I can see it when XP decides to use the GPRS link for its
>> updating :-(
>>
>> Enough reason for me to prefer Plan 9 (and NetBSD, but I can only get
>> my teeth into so many apples), if there weren't many more reasons.
>>
>> ++L
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 12:20 PM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
>> Seriously, give Gentoo portage a try. There is a sane package
>> management system for Linux.
>
> if you don't upgrade in lock step you will get into dependency hell.
> portage is now exactly what its developers railed against — rpm
> dependency hell.  portage just kicks the can down the street a bit.

I didn't upgrade for 6 months because of the e2fsprogs problem, but
when I finally did, I didn't have any problems across 190 packages.

>
> in fact, an upgraded system will differ significantly from a fresh install
> even after an emerge world.
>
> portage is just broken.

In many ways, yes, but it is less broken than apt or rpm. The only way
it could be less broken is by not caring about dependencies, but then
you're left with something like Arch, where you *really* have to know
what you're doing.

Of course, 90% of this could be solved by the elimination of shared
libraries, but oh well.

>
> unfortunately, i don't know of any alternatives that will allow me
> and not rh or somebody else to decided if i am going to run ldap
> or whatever.

If you want something that gives you freedom from "standard packaging"
and is less of a nanny than portage, either LFS or Arch are your best
bet.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 12:20 PM, ron minnich  wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 9:10 AM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>
>> I agree that generally only one process will be accessing a "normal"
>> file at once. I think an editor is not a good example, as you say.
>>
>
> I'll say it again. It does not matter what we think. It matters what
> apps do. And some apps have multiple processes accessing one file.
>
> As to the wisdom of such access, there are many opinions :-)
>
> You really can not just rule things out because reasonable people
> don't do them. Unreasonable people write apps too.
>
> ron
>

I just meant it was a bad example, not that the case of an editor
doing something can or should be ruled out.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

>
> I _do_ think yours should come first! Having to say: "yes" to an user...

If you don't say 'yes' at some point, you won't have a system anyone
will want to use. Remember all those quotes about why Unix doesn't
prevent you from doing stupid things?

Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Eris Discordia
 wrote:
>> That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could
>> never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart
>> more than once on a typical series of updates.
>
> Windows isn't really the subject on this thread or this list. Except when
> someone goes out of their way to nonsensically blame it. I don't think
> that's really meaningful or productive in any imaginable way. As it happens,
> no one here is really a Windows user (or some are and they're laughing in
> the hiding bush). You are no better. Please do substantiate what you claim
> or stop trolling. There are absolutely no mandatory Windows updates; you can
> run a Windows system intact, with zero modification, for as long as you want
> or as long as it holds up given its shortcomings. So, my educated guess
> goes: you have zero acquaintance with that OS. Not even as much acquaintance
> as a normal user should have.

Actually, I used Windows for years before discovering something
better. I explicitly disabled updates in XP, and it would insist on
looking for them and bothering me about them, anyway.

Now maybe I missed some other option or the option I chose was
misleadingly labeled, or something was biffed in my registry. I just
googled for "can't turn off Automatic update" and found a bunch of
similar stories, though. In any event, it was so long ago I can't
remember what the circumstances exactly were.

>
> --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:19 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro"
>  wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Eris Discordia
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> This thing about Windows updates, I think it's a non-issue. It's not like
>>> updates are mandatory and, as a matter of fact, there's rather
>>> fine-grained classification of them on Microsoft's knowledge base which
>>> can be used by any more or less experienced user to identify exactly
>>> what they need for addressing a specific glitch and to download and
>>> install that and only that. Periodic updates of Windows are really
>>> unnecessary and can be easily turned off. Cumulative updates (like the
>>> service packs), on the other hand, are often the best way to go.
>>
>> That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could
>> never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart
>> more than once on a typical series of updates.
>>
>>>
>>> What seems to actually be the problem for you is that you don't like
>>> being told there's a closed modification to your existing closed
>>> software. Well, that's the nature of binary-only proprietary for-profit
>>> software. The only way to get you to pay out of anything other than good
>>> will, which is a rare bird.
>>
>> No, I think he's saying that Windows Update is a piece of fetid garbage.
>>
>>>
>>> P.S. On open/free software mailing lists and forums justice is often not
>>> done to Windows, et al. Particularly, no meaningful alternative is
>>> presented for carrying out the important duties Windows currently
>>> performs for general computing, i.e. non-technical home and office
>>> applications which combined together were and continue to be the killer
>>> application of microcomputers.
>>
>> Mac's updater is miles ahead of Windows Update, but both are still
>> crappy. I've given Linux to several "computer illiterates" and they
>> were immediately relieved that they could open up a single application
>> and search for any kind of software they needed, and updating it all
>> was done by that simple application. How simple is that!
>>
>> The rate of failure of updates (compared to Windows update, which
>> would leave you with a completely unusable system every once in a
>> while) was also much lower.
>>
>>>
>>> --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 8:11 AM +0200 lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote:
>>>
>>>>> The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something
>>>>> using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have
>>>>> explicit control over the update process.
>>>>
>>>> I was specifically omitting BSD ports, as they are in a different
>>>> league.  The point I _was_ making is that one readily sacrifices
>>>> control for convenience and that Linux and Windows users and those who
>>>> assist them have to accept second-rate management and pay for it (I
>>>> should know, I can see it when XP decides to use the GPRS link for its
>>>> updating :-(
>>>>
>>>> Enough reason for me to prefer Plan 9 (and NetBSD, but I can only get
>>>> my teeth into so many apples), if there weren't many more reasons.
>>>>
>>>> ++L
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Eris Discordia
 wrote:
>> Actually, I used Windows for years before discovering something
>> better. I explicitly disabled updates in XP, and it would insist on
>> looking for them and bothering me about them, anyway.
>
> I put it here for I don't know what to call it--shall we say... historical
> record?--how to turn off your Windows XP installation's automatic update
> service: get into Control Panel, run the System applet, turn to Automatic
> Updates page tab, set the radio button to your desired option. If you want
> Windows to never download anything of its own accord, even when instructed
> by applications (such as InstallShield) that use Windows Update
> infrastructure for their purposes, go to Control Panel, go to Administrative
> Tools, run the Services MMC snap-in, find Background Intelligent Transfer
> Service, stop the service, set the service's startup mode to 'Disabled.'

Yes, simple as 1,2,3... 4,5,6,7,8,9. What a snap!

>
> Very easy, very logical, very intuitive, clearly documented, and even
> self-documented. Windows has lots of disadvantages but UI, configuration,
> and representation of the local system is where there's the smallest
> concentration of them. If you want to blame it get under the hood, find
> actual OS design flaws, and then laugh to your heart's content.
>
> In conclusion, I apologize to 9fans for polluting their list with Windows
> nonsense. This will end right here even if J. R. Mauro goes on to say
> her/his Windows system won't boot after a clean successful installation.

No one asked you to pollute the list the first time around, and I
haven't run Windows on anything in years. I'm glad it works for you.
Wish I could say the same.

>
> --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 3:43 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro" 
> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Eris Discordia
>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could
>>>> never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart
>>>> more than once on a typical series of updates.
>>>
>>> Windows isn't really the subject on this thread or this list. Except when
>>> someone goes out of their way to nonsensically blame it. I don't think
>>> that's really meaningful or productive in any imaginable way. As it
>>> happens, no one here is really a Windows user (or some are and they're
>>> laughing in the hiding bush). You are no better. Please do substantiate
>>> what you claim or stop trolling. There are absolutely no mandatory
>>> Windows updates; you can run a Windows system intact, with zero
>>> modification, for as long as you want or as long as it holds up given
>>> its shortcomings. So, my educated guess goes: you have zero acquaintance
>>> with that OS. Not even as much acquaintance as a normal user should have.
>>
>> Actually, I used Windows for years before discovering something
>> better. I explicitly disabled updates in XP, and it would insist on
>> looking for them and bothering me about them, anyway.
>>
>> Now maybe I missed some other option or the option I chose was
>> misleadingly labeled, or something was biffed in my registry. I just
>> googled for "can't turn off Automatic update" and found a bunch of
>> similar stories, though. In any event, it was so long ago I can't
>> remember what the circumstances exactly were.
>>
>>>
>>> --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:19 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro"
>>>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Eris Discordia
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> This thing about Windows updates, I think it's a non-issue. It's not
>>>>> like updates are mandatory and, as a matter of fact, there's rather
>>>>> fine-grained classification of them on Microsoft's knowledge base which
>>>>> can be used by any more or less experienced user to identify exactly
>>>>> what they need for addressing a specific glitch and to download and
>>>>> install that and only that. Periodic updates of Windows are really
>>>>> unnecessary and can be easily turned off. Cumulative updates (like the
>>>>> service packs), on the other hand, are often the best way to go.
>>>>
>>>> That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could
>>>> never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart
>>>> more than once on a typical series of updates.
>

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Charles Forsyth  wrote:
> this discussion of checkpoint/restart reminds me of
> a hint i was given years ago: if you wanted to break into a system,
> attack through the checkpoint/restart system. i won a jug of
> beer for my subsequent successful attack which involved patching
> the disc offset for an open file in a copy of the Slave Service Area saved
> by the checkpoint; with the offset patched to zero, the newly restored process
> could read the file and dump the users and passwords conveniently stored in 
> the clear at
> the start of the system area of the system disc.  the hard bit was
> writing the code to dump the data in a tidy way.
>
>

Unfortunately, in the rush to build the Next Cool Thing people often
leave security issues to the very end, at which point shoehorning
fixes in gets ugly.

Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9

[J.R. Mauro]

>>
>> The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something
>> using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have
>> explicit control over the update process.
>
> I don't think so, one can acquire a complete control over any common
> Linux distribution, can opt for tuning and, tweaking around any package
> build system, provided one has the knowledge and courage to do so.

Yes and no. If you want to patch something, you have to build it on
your own, so you lose package management support. And building your
own deb package is not a great process. Plus, you have to rebuild it
whenever you update. I'm not saying you can't "completely control"
your distro, just that the package manager is inflexible and immature.
USE flags give you /real/ control over packages without forcing you to
step out of the package management infrastructure (i.e., you don't
have to install anything locally to get a patch incorporated, and you
don't sacrifice updates). You also have less namespace pollution, such
as having mutt and mutt-ng in the repository.

Emerge and ports also don't have a database that can only have one
process using it at a time, and don't take forever to update said
database.

>
> OTOH, I hate wasting cpu cycles on compiling each and every package from
> source; IMHO, building, updating and managing a FreeBSD, Gentoo and, or
> other so called source or meta distribution is merely a wastage of the
> man and machine hours.
>

I wouldn't install gentoo on an older machine, but on anything I use
day-to-day, the compilation time is a non-issue. There is no wastage
of man-hours in managing Gentoo. That is what emerge is for. There is
some wastage in CPU cycles. I never notice it (a decent machine can
emerge world, watch an HD movie, and compile a Linux kernel without
slowdown)

Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

[J.R. Mauro]

>
> What kind of latency?
>
> For speed of light in fibre optic 30ms is about 8000km (New York to San
> Francisco and back)

Assuming you have a direct fiber connection with no routers in
between. I would say that is somewhat rare.

Re: [9fans] roots

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 10:16 AM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
> where do they think linux, minux, unix came from?
>
> “
>        "It rarely leads to good things" when a small community gets
>        headed off in their own direction, he [lwn editor j. corbet] said.

That's odd since he's worked on Linux for quite some time writes about
every new feature.

>
>        — http://lwn.net/Articles/327938/
>
> - erik
>
>

[9fans] Vidi

[J.R. Mauro]

Does anyone have any updates/links to source code for vidi? I just got
a venti up and running to back my laptop up to and I'd really like to
have vidi in between for when I'm offline.

Re: [9fans] Vidi

[J.R. Mauro]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Latchesar Ionkov  wrote:
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/vidi
>
> It doesn't run on Plan9 though.

Thanks! I'm just using it on a linux laptop. Is there any
documentation? If not and you'd be willing to explain it, I can write
man pages for it.

>
>    Lucho
>
> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 6:15 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>> Does anyone have any updates/links to source code for vidi? I just got
>> a venti up and running to back my laptop up to and I'd really like to
>> have vidi in between for when I'm offline.
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] sources down?

[J.R. Mauro]

There are plenty of mirrors, I'm pretty sure the "sources is down
AGAIN" comments could be mitigated by people improving their 9fs
scripts.

Re: [9fans] sources down?

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 8:17 PM, ron minnich  wrote:
> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 4:59 PM, J.R. Mauro  wrote:
>> There are plenty of mirrors, I'm pretty sure the "sources is down
>> AGAIN" comments could be mitigated by people improving their 9fs
>> scripts.
>>
>>
>
> would be interesting to have a server that provided reliability by
> using whatever mirrors are out there and falling over transparently as
> things failed.

Mycroftiv (on #plan9) was working on some "unkillable" cpu session
that shows promise.

Re: [9fans] sources down?

[J.R. Mauro]

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Steve Simon  wrote:
>> damn, he found out our evil plan...
>
> And we would have got away with it if it hadn't been for you pesky kids.
>

And their TALKING DOG.

Re: [9fans] Configuring NFS

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 2:34 PM, John Floren  wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Roman V. Shaposhnik  wrote:
>> On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 11:03 -0700, John Floren wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Roman V. Shaposhnik  wrote:
>>> > On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 10:30 -0700, John Floren wrote:
>>> >> Has anyone here successfully set up nfsserver to share Plan 9 files
>>> >> with Unix machines? The examples given in the man pages are rather...
>>> >> opaque. All I want to do is share one directory tree (/lib/music, in
>>> >> particular) with a number of independent Linux laptops and
>>> >> workstations.
>>> >
>>> > I used it in combination with Solaris.
>>>
>>> Do you still have the configuration?
>>
>> I might. For Solaris NFS was *the* only choice. For Linux I have
>> abandoned NFS approach in favor of native 9P. You should be
>> aware of the fact that nfsserver can only speak NFS v.2 which
>> is *really* old.
>>
>>> I'm looking at the man page for
>>> nfsserver but wondering what the machine 'ivy' does, and what exactly
>>> 'pie' and 'yoshimi' are doing, etc.
>>
>> If you have practical questions -- feel free to ask them. I'll try
>> to dig bits and pieces of my Solaris setup for you later this week.
>> So far, I can tell you this much: nfsserver is NFS to 9P translator.
>> Thus you can hide a whole bunch of 9P-aware services behind a single
>> nfsserver by specifying multiple -a options (in fact these 9P
>> services don't even have to be remote machines). Each individual -a
>> entry will become a single NFS export share in its own right (visible
>> via showmount -e).
>>
>> So, when you see something like
>>   aux/nfsserver –a tcp!pie –a tcp!yoshimi
>> all this means is that we are creating 2 NFS shares pie and yoshimi
>> on a single NFS server.
>>
>>> >> I'm looking into NFS because it seems that it has about the lowest
>>> >> barrier to entry of all the possible file-sharing methods. Any other
>>> >> suggestions would be appreciated.
>>> >
>>> > Whether or not to use NFS depends greatly on what is on the other end.
>>> > What kind of UNIX?
>>> >
>>>
>>> Like I said, it's a collection of Linux machines, mostly running
>>> Debian, Ubuntu, and Redhat.
>>
>> In that case why not use FUSE and 9P? This will also let you mount
>> more easily from a non-root accounts.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Roman.
>>
>
> I'd like to use the 9p mounting available in Linux, but it doesn't
> seem to work in this case.
> I try "mount -t 9p glenda /mnt" (glenda is my cpu/file server) and get:
> mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on glenda,
>       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
>       (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might
>       need a /sbin/mount. helper program)
>       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
>       dmesg | tail  or so

You could try 9pfuse and redistribute it standalone if it works.

>
> If I do "mount -t 9p 192.168.18.180 /mnt", using the file server IP, I just 
> get
> mount: permission denied
> But dmesg shows "[88617.144804] p9_errstr2errno: server reported
> unknown error cannot attach as none before authentication", ONLY when
> I use the IP address--nothing appears when I use the /etc/hosts alias
> "glenda".
>
> What am I missing?
>
>
> John
> --
> "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS
> reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C,
> Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba
>
>

Re: [9fans] plan 9 regexp

[J.R. Mauro]

Speaking of regexes in Plan 9, did the "structural awk" or "stream
sam" Rob dreamed of in the SE paper ever get realized?

Re: [9fans] plan 9 regexp

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 7:56 PM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
> On Wed Jun  3 19:41:39 EDT 2009, n...@lsub.org wrote:
>> I have a ssam script that does the work. But  it's not really streaming.
>>
>> El 04/06/2009, a las 1:36, jrm8...@gmail.com escribió:
>>
>> > Speaking of regexes in Plan 9, did the "structural awk" or "stream
>> > sam" Rob dreamed of in the SE paper ever get realized?
>> >
>> > [/mail/box/nemo/msgs/200906/41493]
>>
>
> here's a pointer to the previous discussion of ssam, which
> does exist for unix:
>
> http://9fans.net/archive/2003/10/309

Unfortunately, I can't get it to build. It looks long un(der)maintained.

>
> "structural awk" is still a tempting idea.  but why not
> just go wild and implement a shell with sres?

One step at a time. Although if I woke up tomorrow and everything from
sed to lex and yacc and rc magically had sres, I would be very /very/
happy.

You can kind of get something not entirely unlike sres in sed, but it
is quite hard and unintuitive.

[9fans] p9p Juke issues

[J.R. Mauro]

Hi all,

In an attempt to get the Juke program to play nice with other programs
wanting to use sound, I modified the Juke script to run 'aoss ajuke
$*'

This had the result of letting other programs access the sound card,
but now Juke can't play more than one song. It seems that ajuke is
stuck on something, and I'm having a hard time debugging it. I ran the
following to try to see what's happening (this is after I try to
2-click Next while Juke is playing a song):

; lsof | grep snd
ajuke 23365 thedoctor4u  CHR  116,0   0t0
   5678 /dev/snd/controlC0
ajuke 26261 thedoctor  mem   CHR 116,16
   5671 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
ajuke 26261 thedoctor9r  CHR 116,33   0t0
   5422 /dev/snd/timer
ajuke 26261 thedoctor   10u  CHR 116,16   0t0
   5671 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
ajuke 26261 thedoctor   11u  CHR  116,0   0t0
   5678 /dev/snd/controlC0
; ps | grep ajuke
1000   23364  23:08  0:00892K pipe_w ajuke
1000   23365  23:08  0:00   2172K futex_ ajuke
1000   26261  23:09  0:00   1232K poll_s ajuke
;

Does anyone know enough about Juke and aoss to shed some light on this?

Thanks
~jrm

Re: [9fans] plan 9 regexp

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:27 PM, erik quanstrom  wrote:
>>
>> It does. That doesn't build either :(
>>
>
> there is very little source code there.  why not dump the configure
> goo and use p9p instead?
>
> - erik
>
>

I want to, but as usual, time is a problem.

[9fans] geoloc - a crappy script I wrote.

[J.R. Mauro]

Hi,

Someone on contrib has a gmap (not the shell script one that was
mentioned recently, the older(?) one done in C). I made the following
stupid script to help start gmap at a user-specified address. Gmap
only understands coordinates, which I can't memorize. But it's
generally useful besides a gmap helper, I suppose. I'm trying to see
if I can get something like google maps directions based on geoloc
since the yahoo site it uses seems to not fail if you give it a very
vague address, unlike most other services I've tried. I suppose I
could try to see if I can get a barebones access to google maps
directions. Like an XML page or something. If anyone knows how, I'd
appreciate some pointers.

The script outputs lat and lon (in that order) delimited with a '?'
character, because that is what gmap uses. This is so that I can do
something like:

gmap -n`{geoloc 123 foo street anywhereville}

Please note that the gmap on sources expects longitude to come before
latitude for its -n option. I think that is backward from the normal
convention, so I modified mine locally to swap them. It's a simple
change.

The script is really stupid and calls sed 87 times because it's
parsing an ugly xml page and I don't know any better. Please feel free
to tell me how bad it is.

Without further ado:


#!/bin/rc
# geoloc - find coordinates of an address

if (~ $#* 0) {
echo Usage: geoloc address
exit
}

addr = `{echo $* | sed -e 's/ /+/g'}

hget 
http://api.local.yahoo.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid'='capelinks'&'location'='$addr'&'Geocode'='Geocode
| \
awk -F'>' '{ print $4"X?"$6}' | sed -e 's/<.*eX//' | sed -e
's/<.*e//' | sed -e '/X/d'

Re: [9fans] geoloc - a crappy script I wrote.

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:12 PM, erik quanstrom wrote:
> On Fri Jun  5 22:03:29 EDT 2009, jrm8...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Someone on contrib has a gmap (not the shell script one that was
>> mentioned recently, the older(?) one done in C). I made the following
>> stupid script to help start gmap at a user-specified address. Gmap
>> only understands coordinates, which I can't memorize. But it's
>
> steve's gmap script does a great job with arbitrary addresses.  for example
>
>        ; gmap 220 college ave athens ga
>
> - erik
>
>

The gmap script is pretty cool, but I have problems with it on p9p and
it's not interactive. The other gmap has some nifty features I like.

I hope even if you don't use the other gmap you might like geoloc
since it is still useful in and of itself. Even though it's a hack.

Re: [9fans] geoloc - a crappy script I wrote.

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:01 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote:

> generally useful besides a gmap helper, I suppose. I'm trying to see
> if I can get something like google maps directions based on geoloc
> since the yahoo site it uses seems to not fail if you give it a very
> vague address, unlike most other services I've tried. I suppose I
> could try to see if I can get a barebones access to google maps
> directions. Like an XML page or something. If anyone knows how, I'd
> appreciate some pointers.

Here's a hack on top of my hack. The real suckage comes from me making
geoloc separate lat and lon with '?' to appease gmap. It's a small
change if you don't like it. I really want subway directions, but
apparently Yahoo can't do that. I'll keep digging.


#!/bin/rc
# directions -- print directions from a coordinate pair to another.

if (! ~ $#* 2) {
echo Usage: directions lat1?lon1 lat2?lon2
exit
}

SLA = `{echo $1 | sed -e 's/\?.*//'}
SLO = `{echo $1 | sed -e 's/.*\?//'}
DLA = `{echo $2 | sed -e 's/\?.*//'}
DLO = `{echo $2 | sed -e 's/.*\?//'}

#echo I got: $SLA $SLO $DLA $DLO

hget 
'http://maps.yahoo.com/print?mvt=m&tp=1&stx=&fcat=&frat=&clat='^$DLA^'&clon='^$DLO^'&mag=10&zoom=9&trf=0&radius=134.16445&&q1='$SLA'%20'^$SLO^'&q2='^$DLA^'%20'^$DLO^'&v3=0'
| htmlfmt

Re: [9fans] Configuring NFS

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Roman V Shaposhnik wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> it took me sometime to go through the old backups but it seems
> that the NFS setup is gone by now. You can still ask questions,
> if you want to, but I won't be able to send you all the working
> conf. files.
>
> On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 11:34 -0700, John Floren wrote:
>> I'd like to use the 9p mounting available in Linux, but it doesn't
>> seem to work in this case.
>> I try "mount -t 9p glenda /mnt" (glenda is my cpu/file server) and get:
>> mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on glenda,
>>        missing codepage or helper program, or other error
>>        (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might
>>        need a /sbin/mount. helper program)
>>        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
>>        dmesg | tail  or so
>>
>> If I do "mount -t 9p 192.168.18.180 /mnt", using the file server IP, I just 
>> get
>> mount: permission denied
>> But dmesg shows "[88617.144804] p9_errstr2errno: server reported
>> unknown error cannot attach as none before authentication", ONLY when
>> I use the IP address--nothing appears when I use the /etc/hosts alias
>> "glenda".
>>
>> What am I missing?
>
> I have very little experience working with the in-kernel support for
> 9P. Somehow 9P and being a superuser feel mutually exclusive to me.

Yes. This is sad. Sqweek has some suid tools to help get around the nastiness.

> Thus, I can only recommend 9pfuse. It worked quite well for the limited
> application I needed it for.
>
> Thanks,
> Roman.
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Different representations of the same file/resource in a synthetic FS

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 1:14 PM, Roman V Shaposhnik wrote:
> Lets assume a classical example (modified slightly to fit 9P):
> a synthetic filesystem that serves images from a web cam.
> The very same frame can be asked for in different formats
> (.gif, .png, .pdf, etc.). Is serving
>   gif/frame
>   png/frame
>   ...
>   pdf/frame
> and relying on reading
>   ///
> for the list of "supported" representations really better
> than what HTTP content negotiation offers?
>

Plan 9 does this a bit, in that you can ask a special file in /net for
how to dial a certain host across all protocols. You can then pick the
one that suits you, and get instructions on how to use that proto
inside /net. I think it's a good use.

[9fans] P9P gmail

[J.R. Mauro]

Hi,

I've gotten mailfs to work in plan9port with gmail's imap service, and
now I'd like to get smtp working so I can reply. Has anyone tried
this? Is there a way to do it? How about configuring Acme Mail to use
something other than marshal (say, mutt)?

Thanks in advance,
Jorden

Re: [9fans] critique of sockets API

[J.R. Mauro]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Bhanu Nagendra
Pisupati wrote:
> First off, I really am a big fan of filesystem interfaces as used in Plan 9
> - after all my PhD work was based on the model :)

Did you do this on Plan 9 or bring some of the filesystem sanity of another OS?

> My objective here is to debate and understand how the points made in the
> paper relate to the Plan9 networking model.
>
>>> * performance overhead: app requesting data from a socket typically needs
>>> to perform 2 system calls (select/read or alt/read)
>>
>> alt ? which is not required ? is not a system call.  only a read or write
>> is
>> required.
>
> Well, select() or alt might or might not be required depending on whether
> you want your thread to wait till the read operation waiting for data from
> the network completes. You may argue that since threads are "cheap" in Plan9
> you can afford to have a thread wait on the read operation. But that to me
> is a different question...
>
>>> * lack of an "kernel up-call API": which allows the kernel to inform an
>>> app each time network data is available
>>
>> plan 9 uses synchronous i/o, so this statement doesn't make sense
>> in plan 9.  you can use threads to do i/o asynch w.r.t. your application,
>> but the i/o itself is still synchronous w.r.t. the kernel.
>
> Whether the IO is synchronous or not, there is this
> read()->process()->read()... alternating sequence of operations that is
> required, wherein the application has to explicitly go fetch data from the
> network using the read operation. To borrow text from the paper:
> 
> The API does not provide the programmer a way in which to say, "Whenever
> there is data for me, call me to process it directly."
> 
>
>
>>> * hard to implement "multi homing" with support for multiple network
>>> interfaces
>>
>> i have no idea how this relates to the use of a fs in implementing the
>> network stack.  why would using a filsystem (or not) make any difference
>> in the ability to multihome?
>>
>> by the way, plan 9 beats the pants off anything else i've used for
>> multiple
>> network / interface support.  it's support for mulitple ip stacks is quite
>> neat.
>
> The question was meant to ask as to how easy it is to programmatically use
> the filesystem interface in a multi home network. But I agree that support
> for multiple network interfaces in Plan9 is way superior.
>
>

Re: [9fans] P9P gmail

[J.R. Mauro]

That doesn't help. Ridiculously complex or not, I have a mutt that can
talk to gmail via smtp. I've tried following the basic guide on the
wiki for getting smtp to work, but it is plan9-specific and not very
instructive.

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 1:42 AM, Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Jun 2009 18:15:37 -0400
> "J.R. Mauro"  wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've gotten mailfs to work in plan9port with gmail's imap service, and
>> now I'd like to get smtp working so I can reply. Has anyone tried
>> this? Is there a way to do it? How about configuring Acme Mail to use
>> something other than marshal (say, mutt)?
>
> I quail every time I hear the name "mutt". Its config file has beaten me more 
> times than I care to remember, mostly because of it's sheer size. Besides, 
> mutt is a mail client, not a replacement for sendmail.
>
> --
> Ethan Grammatikidis
> The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer
>
>

Re: [9fans] p9p venti problem

[J.R. Mauro]

I can't help with this in particular, but QEMU does some really
low-level hackery to the point where it wouldn't compile with GCC 4,
so it's possible something like that is going on here.

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Adrian Tritschler wrote:
> I've got a p9p venti running on two separate ubuntu linux boxes that
> I've been using for months to keep backups of data and for QEMU plan9
> guests.  They have both stopped working, I suspect due to a recent
> ubuntu kernel update.  I've rebuilt all of p9p but to no avail.
>
> The QEMU guests crash on boot stating "error reading block 43a72...3
> or wrong score: read too small 1: asked for 0 need at le...
> panic: boot process died: unknown"
>
> Any attempt to write data into either venti on the linux systems fails
> with the error:
>
> a...@xyz:~/tmp$ vac x
> create bsize 8192 psize 8160
> vac: vacfscreate: vacfileroot: read too small 1: asked for 0 need at least 389
>
> reading any existing *.vac file also fails:
>
> a...@xyz:~/venti/2009/04/24$ unvac -t xyz_bin-2009-04-24.vac
> unvac: vacfsopen: read too small 1: asked for 0 need at least 300
>
> Any ideas?
> --
> Adrian
>
>

Re: [9fans] plan 9 regexp

[J.R. Mauro]

I got it to build for linux with some modifications, if you or anyone
is interested. Now I just need a sawk and syacc.

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:27 PM, erik quanstrom wrote:
>>
>> It does. That doesn't build either :(
>>
>
> there is very little source code there.  why not dump the configure
> goo and use p9p instead?
>
> - erik
>
>

Re: [9fans] rio with virtuals

[J.R. Mauro]

p9p rio has virtuals, too. I would tell you to look at the source for
more inspiration, but I don't really want to be a comedian.

How does one switch desktops? Can/did you implement scrolling on a
gray bit to switch? Extending the fs?

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 6:54 PM,  wrote:
> I spent a couple hours this afternoon reading rio source and hacking
> it to do virtual desktops.  /n/sources/contrib/john/rio-virtual.tgz
> contains the files from /sys/src/cmd/rio with my changes made.  At
> this time, there is no support for specifying the number of virtuals,
> because I'm lazy--you get six and you will ENJOY IT.
>
> Let me know if you try it and find bugs.  I don't really give a damn
> if you think this is Against The Plan 9 Way.  Personally, the exercise
> gave me a better appreciation for the simplicity of Plan 9 software--I
> was able to take a piece of software I'd never looked at before, read
> the code a bit, and put in some new functionality within an hour or
> two.
>
>
> John
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] confusing astro output

[J.R. Mauro]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 3:43 PM, andrey
mirtchovski wrote:
> most likely "astro" needs to be taught a bit about maths ;)
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drE5cHe6c3s
>

What *was* that?

Re: [9fans] plumbing to get files from odd filesystems, and get pages from local manuals

[J.R. Mauro]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Jason Catena wrote:
> Some plan9port plumbing I wrote which may help someone.
>
> Using the plan9port plumber to find files in ClearCase VOBs.
> http://www.evernote.com/pub/catena/public#7d2e9774-964f-423c-96e9-5e8721b1a78d
>
> Also plumb man(1) pattern to local manual.  New convention "man(1l)"
> to name eclipsed local manual pages.
> http://www.evernote.com/pub/catena/public#73edd473-f300-4e1f-991c-9876eb29dba0

This is helpful, thanks.

>
> Jason Catena
>
>

In addition, here's some plumbing to send coordinates to one of the
mapping programs in contrib:

# coordinate pairs are sent to gmap
type is text
data matches '(-?[0-9]+\.?[0-9]+\?-?[0-9]+\.?[0-9]+)'
plumb start gmap -n$1


I think the matches clause is right, but it could be totally broken.
I'm trying to get the C version of gmap to talk directly to the
plumber on a 'coordinate' port. If anyone has some pointers, I'd be
glad to hear them.

Re: [9fans] Sam commands in acme

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 6:57 AM, roger peppe wrote:
> you need (.|\n) instead of .
>
> sam originally used @ as a "match everything" character
> but it was removed, presumably because it was rarely used.

That's a stupid reason to remove a good feature. By that token, maybe
we should remove structural regular expressions since they're "rarely
used" and just go back to using ed.

Do you know if anyone preserved this feature and could send me the patch?

>
> to match C comments, you need something like this:
>
> x/\/\*([^*]|\*[^\/]|[^*\/]|\n)*\*\//
>
> 2009/6/26 hugo rivera :
>> Hi,
>> I am trying to select all c comments from within a file using acme,
>> but I am unable to do it properly. The command x/\/\*.*\*\// is the
>> closest I could get, but it doesn't work with comments that span over
>> more than one line. This raises a question for me: somewhere, I cannot
>> recall where, I read that commands in sam (and therefore acme) aren't
>> line oriented but selection oriented, so, shouldn't '.*' match newline
>> characters also? why it doesn't? I expected '.*' to work with newline
>> characters since it works for spaces and tabs, and the three of them
>> are white space, among others.
>> And finally, what command I should use to select c comments without
>> regard if they are several lines long or just one?
>> Saludos
>> --
>> Hugo
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Sam commands in acme

[J.R. Mauro]

On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Rob Pike wrote:
>
> Indeed, but it's an excellent reason to remove a bad feature.  @ was a
> bad feature. It was hard to use well because @* or @+ would consume
> the whole file.

Your structural regex paper gripes about . and * not consuming
newlines. Apparently it didn't work in practice as you say, but have
you thought about a different way that might work since? Changing the
delimiter based on context would seem like a good, though heavyweight
and probably harder-to-understand approach.

>
> Deletion is the greatest tool of software design.
>

Quite, though this one in particular seems much less out of place in
sam compared to * despite its glaring faults.

Re: [9fans] Booting plan9 on intel macs

[J.R. Mauro]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> I accidentally installed a FreeBSD drive in my MacBook. To my surprise,
> it just worked. If you install a boot drive with the "usual" PC disk
> partitioning the Macs will boot in what seems to be a fairly complete
> BIOS emulation.
>
> How far Plan9 gets is another story, but my guess is that even if it
> sees the disk controllers properly, it's not going to like the NIC(s).
>
> Don't even try to install it on a Mac. Instead, pull the drive and do
> the install on a normal PC, then stick the drive back into the Mac. This
> might give you a fighting chance, but it's inevitable you'll be doing
> driver work before long.
>
>

Just installing rEFIt will be much easier than any of that, assuming
plan 9 can handle the hardware. But the intel macs use Broadcom NICs
and a weird platform chip for the ambient light sensors and
accelerometers, which you'd have to write a driver for. Looking for
'applesmc' would give some examples. I can't think of other weird
hardware they might use... aside from discrete video cards, they're
mostly intel hardware.

[9fans] Scrolling for plan9port sam

[J.R. Mauro]

could someone help clean this crappy patch up a bit? i'm drunk and sam
not being able to understand my scrollwheel is really pissing me off.
at least this works despite it being ugly and steeped in cheap
whiskey...


--jorden


diff -r 5f1b36ecd9db src/cmd/samterm/main.c
--- a/src/cmd/samterm/main.cTue Jun 09 09:26:13 2009 -0700
+++ b/src/cmd/samterm/main.cWed Jul 01 00:29:48 2009 -0400
@@ -142,6 +142,10 @@
scroll(which, 3);
else
menu3hit();
+   } else if((mousep->buttons&8)) {
+   scroll(nwhich, 1);
+   } else if((mousep->buttons&16)) {
+   scroll(nwhich, 3);
}
mouseunblock();
}
diff -r 5f1b36ecd9db src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c
--- a/src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c  Tue Jun 09 09:26:13 2009 -0700
+++ b/src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c  Wed Jul 01 00:29:48 2009 -0400
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@
 void
 scroll(Flayer *l, int but)
 {
-   int in = 0, oin;
+   int in = 0, oin, scw = 0;
long tot = scrtotal(l);
Rectangle scr, r, s, rt;
int x, y, my, oy, h;
@@ -116,9 +116,10 @@
do{
oin = in;
in = abs(x-mousep->xy.x)<=FLSCROLLWID/2;
+   scw = ((mousep->buttons&8) | (mousep->buttons&16));
if(oin && !in)
scrunmark(l, r);
-   if(in){
+   if(in || scw){
scrmark(l, r);
oy = y;
my = mousep->xy.y;

Re: [9fans] Guide to using Acme effectively?

[J.R. Mauro]

> first trick, but I do use hold mode... usually after I have typed a
> few lines and want to edit them.

Hold mode is a godsend

Re: [9fans] Guide to using Acme effectively?

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 4:00 PM,  wrote:
>> perhaps i should have taken piano, but i find the
>
> That's an interesting observation.  As it turns out I
> do play, and it's certainly possible that it colors my
> taste in UIs.

The weirdest thing about piano for me (typist first) is pressing more
than one key at once very often. That really bemused me.

>
>> contortions kbd-based editors such as vi or emacs
>> require to be quite irritating indeed.  fumbling for
>
> I don't disagree with you there.

vi isn't so bad because it has a huge command language. I was always
fond of it, but now I'm appreciating sam's more spartan, elegant
command set more.

>
>> the esc key takes ones left hand out of position
>
> I'm less sensitive to esc, probably because I used teco
> heavily in college.  Of course, the fact that esc is in
> the wrong place on current keyboards doesn't help
> any.

Indeed. I remap caps to be escape, someplace where it should be.

>
>> i've enjoyed using ibm's trackpoint, but i've got
>> two thumbs and acme needs three buttons.
>> clearly there's room for improvement in input
>> devices.
>
> Agreed on both points.

I like Apple's new mice, but you can't chord with them. I got it
before I got into plan 9. Now I want to chuck it.

Re: [9fans] Scrolling for plan9port sam

[J.R. Mauro]

Here is a less drunk and better working version of the patch.
Scrolling seems to be working perfectly. I hope gmail doesn't eat this
patch.

=

Add scrollwheel support to sam

diff -r 5f1b36ecd9db src/cmd/samterm/main.c
--- a/src/cmd/samterm/main.cTue Jun 09 09:26:13 2009 -0700
+++ b/src/cmd/samterm/main.cWed Jul 01 20:01:37 2009 -0400
@@ -142,6 +142,10 @@
scroll(which, 3);
else
menu3hit();
+   } else if((mousep->buttons&8)) {
+   scroll(nwhich, 1);
+   } else if((mousep->buttons&16)) {
+   scroll(nwhich, 3);
}
mouseunblock();
}
diff -r 5f1b36ecd9db src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c
--- a/src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c  Tue Jun 09 09:26:13 2009 -0700
+++ b/src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c  Wed Jul 01 20:01:37 2009 -0400
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@
 void
 scroll(Flayer *l, int but)
 {
-   int in = 0, oin;
+   int in = 0, oin, scw = 0;
long tot = scrtotal(l);
Rectangle scr, r, s, rt;
int x, y, my, oy, h;
@@ -116,18 +116,21 @@
do{
oin = in;
in = abs(x-mousep->xy.x)<=FLSCROLLWID/2;
+   scw = ((mousep->buttons&8) | (mousep->buttons&16));
if(oin && !in)
scrunmark(l, r);
-   if(in){
+   if(in || scw){
scrmark(l, r);
oy = y;
my = mousep->xy.y;
-   if(my < s.min.y)
-   my = s.min.y;
-   if(my >= s.max.y)
-   my = s.max.y;
-   if(!eqpt(mousep->xy, Pt(x, my)))
-   moveto(mousectl, Pt(x, my));
+   if(!scw) {
+   if(my < s.min.y)
+   my = s.min.y;
+   if(my >= s.max.y)
+   my = s.max.y;
+   if(!eqpt(mousep->xy, Pt(x, my)))
+   moveto(mousectl, Pt(x, my));
+   }
if(but == 1){
p0 = l->origin-frcharofpt(&l->f, Pt(s.max.x, 
my));
rt = scrpos(l->scroll, p0, p0+l->f.nchars, tot);
@@ -148,7 +151,7 @@
}
}
}while(button(but));
-   if(in){
+   if(in || scw){
h = s.max.y-s.min.y;
scrunmark(l, r);
p0 = 0;

Re: [9fans] Guide to using Acme effectively?

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 4:56 AM, Aaron W. Hsu wrote:
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions?
>

Perhaps only tangential to what you are after, but there are little
scripts like ind, unind, quote, and powerful things like fmt, awk,
etc. that you can process your text with. Simply type a pipe char and
then the command in a tag (e.g. |ind ), select some text, select the
command, and middle click. I've been writing a bunch of little rc
scripts to help with my day-to-day formatting needs. This is also tons
of fun in Sam.

Re: [9fans] Guide to using Acme effectively?

[J.R. Mauro]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 20:57:19 +0200
> cinap_len...@gmx.de wrote:
>
>> yeah... connecting terminals to warp energy plasma conduits
>> seems to be a bad idea.
>
> Yeah, it's also a deeply wierd thing to do unless the terminals require at 
> least several megawatts. O.o Each...

And apprently they forgot how to make fuses by the late 2200s, because
the consoles all explode when overloaded.

> I can't think of any reason for that. The displays may be print-quality 
> (2000dpi) and the touch layer supposedly able to read fingerprints, but 
> that's not far beyond current tech. Superluminal signalling signalling seems 
> not to require much power as the tiny com badges feature delay-free 
> communication at least as far as lunar orbit. Yes I've done this before. :)
>
> How far off topic are we now? Can we get away with carrying on? :)
>
> --
> Ethan Grammatikidis
>
> Those who are slower at parsing information must
> necessarily be faster at problem-solving.
>
>

Re: [9fans] my ts7200 port

[J.R. Mauro]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 7:37 PM, ron minnich wrote:
> I just ported the linux driver

I'm interested in how hard this is, and how it might be made easier.

Re: [9fans] Fonts

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:50 PM, John Floren wrote:
> Remember, only heathens use ` to begin a quote.
>
> The enlightened use ' and " for all kinds of single and double quotes,
> because you can copy/paste them anywhere and everybody sees them
> properly. Also, few things in the world look worse than seeing a quote
> done ``like this'' in a monospace font.
>

Pff, I'm not a heather, I'm a TeX user. Dumb quotes are just that.

Re: [9fans] Fonts

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:44 PM, erik quanstrom wrote:
>> Speaking of that, is there a way to do the reverse, to get plan 9
>> Bigelow fonts that Linux can use? I'm sick of my browser not knowing
>> that the character left of the 1 on my keyboard is an open-quote.
>
> maybe this is your problem:
>
> ; unicode '`'
> 0060
> ; look 0060 /lib/unicode
> 0060    grave accent
>
> unicode says it's a grave accent, not an open quote.
> but i always called that a "tick".
>
> perhaps this is what you mean?
>
> ; grep '(left|right) single quot' /lib/unicode
> 2018    left single quotation mark
> 2019    right single quotation mark
>
> - erik
>
>

Yes, but with all the work in Acme and Sam, I've become quite
accustomed to having ` look nice. It just makes the browser look out
of place. It's not just the tick either, I'd like the browser font to
generally look the same.

Re: [9fans] Fonts

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:47 PM, erik quanstrom wrote:
>> > The enlightened use ' and " for all kinds of single and double quotes,
>> > because you can copy/paste them anywhere and everybody sees them
>> > properly. Also, few things in the world look worse than seeing a quote
>> > done ``like this'' in a monospace font.
>> >
>>
>> Pff, I'm not a heather, I'm a TeX user. Dumb quotes are just that.
>
> my terminal doesn't do \TeX.  does yours?\p
> \vskip 1em
> --- erik
> \bye
>
>

Nah, I just parse it in my head.

Re: [9fans] Fonts

[J.R. Mauro]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:51 PM, erik quanstrom wrote:
>> Yes, but with all the work in Acme and Sam, I've become quite
>> accustomed to having ` look nice. It just makes the browser look out
>> of place. It's not just the tick either, I'd like the browser font to
>> generally look the same.
>
> that's hard.  i haven't found one yet that looks good in
> both a browser and in plan 9.  i use code2000.  but i would
> buy a "better" font, if there were one available.
>
> i use the vera fonts in abaco (the fonts are also available
> for linux) but the coverage is very poor.  π is the only
> greek letter available.
>
> - erik
>
>

There are no ttf/Xft/$format versions of the Bigelow and Holmes lucida
fonts? The Ludica typefaces available on Linux are definitely not the
same -- much poorer quality.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 as an everyday OS

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:46 PM,  wrote:
>
> I'm tired of the perpetual September, after several years of being
> polite and pointing people to the wiki and the archives.

You could filter instead of bitching and contributing to the noise.

>
> Even Ghandi would have eventually gotten sick of people asking, "So,
> hey, what's up with this thing you're doing here, and how are the
> British involved?"
>
> Resuming operation as a human Google proxy in 3... 2... 1...
>
> I use Plan 9 as my desktop for development.  I keep a Linux laptop
> beside the desktop for running a browser, although I've been fiddling
> with linuxemu so I can potentially use just the Plan 9 box.  When I'm
> at home, I use a Linux box for watching movies and everything else,
> although I could do basically everything except web browsing and movie
> watching from within Plan 9 there too.
>
> It's really a pretty good time to start using Plan 9, if you're
> willing to put in a little work.  fgb's contrib(1) scripts make it
> easy to install software, some of which is very useful in migrating
> from Linux or interoperating with Linux; I'm using openssh on a daily
> basis, I've been using X11 as I experiment with linuxemu, and I just
> installed TeX which I'll probably try next time I have to write a
> paper.  It also feels like the number of users is growing, despite my
> increasingly curmudgeonly sentiments (durn kids git orf mah lawn).
> We're also gaining recognition in the general OS world and especially
> in supercomputing, thanks to the FastOS work.
>
> I probably said a lot of this last time somebody posted one of these
> threads.  I'll probably say it again the next time.
>
>
>
>
> John
>
>> Thanks for saying what I didn't have the words to say. May I quote you
>> forever?
>> -joe
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Noah Evans  wrote:
>>
>>> There's nothing wrong with being new.   There's nothing wrong with being
>>> polite either.
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:52 PM, John Floren  wrote:
>>>
>>>  At least once a month it happens. We can't escape. We're forever
 doomed to get a "Can I use Plan 9 as my desktop OS for web browsing
 and watching movies and stuff?" thread every couple weeks, because
 people are only willing to spend jst enough effort to find the
 Plan 9 web page and subscribe to 9fans.


 John

 On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:30 AM, André Günther wrote:

> there's a thing called mailing list archives.
> and you know..heh..there's this funny thing..dunno, it's called google or
> something.
> what you do is: type some words and then hit return...and wooha it
> searches
> like the whole web. it's magic.
>
> On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:05 PM, Lorenzo Bolla wrote:
>
>  Hi all,
>> I've just installed (with few difficulties, I must admit) a fresh Plan9
>> on
>> my Dell Inspiron laptop.
>> I played with it and I'd really like to study it and get used to it.
>> Ideally, I would like to make it my "everyday OS", to do all the nice
>> stuff you can do with a computer (a part from work and study), like
>> browsing
>> the web, watching movies and so on...
>> Is anyone using it for such things?
>> Is there, for example, a decent browser for Plan9 (I haven't found any)?
>> Or a music/movie player?
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>> Lorenzo.
>>
>
>
>
>


 --
 "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS
 reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C,
 Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba


>>>
>
>
>