[9fans] C question - completely OT, but I'd like to know the answer

[Winston Kodogo]

Sorry to bother the list, but I thought I might get a sensible answer
here from the few remaining people in the world who actually
understand C.

The following bit of code seems to be more or less syntactically OK:

switch (nurdge)
{
int nigel = 1;
case 0:
if(nigel == 1)
printf(nigel is one.\n);
else
printf(nigel is not one.\n);  

default:
printf(The value of nigel is %d, nigel);
}

Something close to this compiles under my C compiler, and yet the
variable nigel is not initialised, and the test inside the first
case test is pretty much certain to print nigel is not one. Although
my C++ compiler does complain about an uninitialised variable.

I'm puzzled as to why the line int nigel = 1; is syntactically OK,
and although it seems to have declared the variable nigel - else the
following code would fail to compile - has failed to give it the
initial value of 1, as requested.

Re: [9fans] tcl, 9p

[Winston Kodogo]

Speaking as someone who is too old and senile and stupid even to
become a High Court Judge, I find the lack of improvements to Tcl to
be a major attraction. I don’t need to program in it that often – I
maintain one moderately-sized script which hardly ever changes -  but
when I need to re-visit it, I find that I can pick it up again easily,
unlike whatever moving-target language the cool kids are using this
week. It also doesn’t hurt that Ousterhout’s book is a model of
clarity.

[9fans] awk reading?

[Winston Kodogo]

I know that the original request was for online reading about awk, but
I can't help adding my recommendation for the offline dead tree
version of The awk Programming Language by awk. I resisted buying
it for years, on the grounds of its extraordinary price on Amazon,
succumbed eventually, and have never regretted it. The book is a
little miracle of clarity in a confused world.

And if you don't want to buy that, consider The Unix Programming
Environment by Kernighan  Pike - chapter 4 covers awk, and the rest
of the book covers all of the bits of Unix you needed to know until
the lunatics took over the asylum.

[9fans] Rising intonation

[Winston Kodogo]

 It's not public? read with rising intonation?

Charles? I'd never have picked you as as a Kiwi?? But your rising
intonation has given you away???

Re: [9fans] Rising intonation.

[Winston Kodogo]

 Don't worry cuzz, he's a Bwit.

Sweet as, bro. Welease Wodger!

[9fans] Heresy alert

[Winston Kodogo]

I'd vote for spelling it Xerox, on the possibly spurious grounds that
a Chinese colleague of mine pronounced it ex-rocks for some time. I
still prefer his pronunciation, and have adopted it myself. The
initial Z just doesn't work for me.

[9fans] C++

[Winston Kodogo]

Ay, Curamba!

This discussion is exactly why we need Boyd.

But, let the record show, C++ has been scientifically shown to be an
unbelievably crap and monstrously complex language, even though I earn
my daily bread by using it. I was a contemporary of Dr Stroustrup when
he was spending his time dragging the Cambridge mainframe to its knees
using the Simula compiler - the kindest description I ever heard from
friends in the computer lab was stubborn-  and occasionally, ok
frequently, or indeed always, am tempted to view C++ as his revenge on
the world for pointing out that he doesn't have a clue how to program
efficiently.

[9fans] C++

[Winston Kodogo]

 Been trying to read through this thread through the day and well I think
 the absurdity of your claim pretty much sums up a large portion of the
 thread, unfortunately.  Ay Caramba indeed :(


Hey, I haven't really been following this thread either. I have a day
job, and was just channeling my inner Boyd and venting in my spare
time because I entirely agree with Linus and jwz about C++. But thanks
for the compliment about my summarising prowess.

Bakul was right - that was rude. But he was also wrong, in that game
programmers pretty much all write in C, a most excellent language,
described in one of the finest books ever written about programming,
rather than C++. But I've bought every single copy of The C++
Programming Language since it came out, have waded through the
pompous and ponderous prose, grappled with the lack of a decent index,
and seriously, can you read chapter 22 of the Special Edition with a
straight face?

Re: [9fans] 9fans Digest, Vol 103, Issue 52

[Winston Kodogo]

Also, also, it was Gorka rather than Bakul who called me out for being
rude, so apologies to both.

But this is my favourite section from Herr Stroustrup's book - from
Section C.13.5 - although the following section (C.13.6 Template as a
Qualifier) is also good for a laugh. Right, I'll shut up and stop
trolling after this.

However, this does not allow us to write:
templateclass Cvoid f(Cv) {
C::iterator i=v.begin();//error
//... }

Unfortunately, the compiler isn’t required to be psychic, so it
doesn’t know that C::iterator is the name of a type. In the previous
example, the compiler could look at the declaration of vector to
determine that the iterator in vectorT::iterator was a type. That is
not possible when the qualifier is a type parameter. Naturally, a
compiler could postpone all checking until instantiation time where
all information is available and could then accept such examples.
However, that would be a nonstandard language extension.

Consider an example stripped of clues as to its meaning:

templateclass Tvoid f(Tv) {
T::x(y); // error? }

Is T::x a function called with a nonlocal variable y as its argument?
Or, are we declaring a variable y with the type T::x perversely using
redundant parentheses? We could imagine a context in which X::x(y) was
a function call and Y::x(y) was a declaration.

The resolution is simple: unless otherwise stated, an identifier is
assumed to refer to something that is not a type or a template. If we
want to state that something should be treated as a type, we can do so
using the typename keyword:
templateclass Cvoid f(Cv) {
typename C::iterator i=v.begin();
//... }
The typename keyword can be placed in front of a qualified name to
state that the entity named is a type. In this, it resembles struct
and class.
The typename keyword can also be used as an alternative to class in
template declarations. For example:
templatetypename Tvoid f(T);

Being an indifferent typist and always short of screen space, I prefer
the shorter:
templateclass Tvoid f(T);

Re: [9fans] 9fans Digest, Vol 103, Issue 57

[Winston Kodogo]

 This is a technical mailing list, what do you expect?

These days, I expect exactly what I see here. Boring technical
fuckwittage, to which I've obviously contributed more than my fair
share,  and nothing else. But there was a time when this group was a
nice place to hang out, when you could actually learn something from
discursive, immensely good-humoured posts by Herr Presotto (whom God
preserve), absorb the ex-cathedra pronouncements of Herr Pike, and
even spend a pleasant afternoon quoting Spinal Tap. Those days are
gone, but I miss them.

Re: [9fans] 9fans Digest, Vol 103, Issue 58

[Winston Kodogo]

 ken has left the building

Yeah, but I'm fairly sure that rob made him do it.

Re: [9fans] ANTS: Better in every single way than standard plan 9.

[Winston Kodogo]

 MY SOFTWARE MAKES PLAN NINE BETTER

 MY SOFTWARE FIXES HUGE NUMBERS OF PLAN NINE PROBLEMS

 MY SOFTWARE IS EXACTLY WHAT ROB PIKE AND CREW SHOULD HAVE MADE PLAN NINE DO 
 ALREADY


Hey, that's just like your opinion, man. And p9p did tie the room together.

[9fans] ANTS: Better in every single way than standard plan 9.

[Winston Kodogo]

 AM I THE ONLY ONE AROUND HERE WHO GIVES A S#$% ABOUT THE NAMESPACES?

Careful man, there's a beverage here.

[9fans] gcc

[Winston Kodogo]

I regret that you regret responding, and hope that you will relent.
It's always refreshing to hear from curmudgeons with quite a few more
clues than oneself.  I'm not sure if I'm the public exactly, but I do
find mk and make too labour-intensive for my tastes.  I'm now an IDE
kind of guy, having started out using Fortran IV on a 300 baud
teletype as a contemporary of Barmy Shoestring, and having moved on to
Microsoft Visual Studio, which, in its 2008 incarnation, the last good
one, I actually liked. So shoot me. But I've also learnt to value the
terseness of the command line, and have been, in many ways, vastly
more productive using tips on this list, and also from The Unix
Programming Environment. Each to their own - there is no one set of
tools that suits everyone. Xcode increasingly works for me. And how
many of the youth have read Fowler?

 Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:43:24 -0700
 From: Rob Pike robp...@gmail.com
 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs 9fans@9fans.net
 Subject: Re: [9fans] gcc not an option for Plan9
 Message-ID:
 cakzdpgxqu230qeku_rcupgme0soq1nee+woye0tzz2pzw9n...@mail.gmail.com
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

 I just did a go install, after a clean, of the biggest binary I'm
 working on, using my pokey old mac laptop. It took 0.9 seconds, most
 of which was spent in 6l and not the go tool. It could be faster, but
 it's plenty fast enough.

 The public won't use mk or make. If you want to succeed in the world,
 you need to find a more modern way to build software. It's been clear
 for a long time that that is not a relevant criterion for this
 community any more, and although it makes me sad I have moved on.

 I regret responding to this thread, and will move on there, too.

 -rob

Re: [9fans] gcc not an option for Plan9

[Winston Kodogo]

To go back to the original subject

Surely this is the first time that has ever been done on 9fans?

This is 9fans, not 'Nam. There are rules.

Re: [9fans] 9fans Digest, Vol 107, Issue 61

[Winston Kodogo]

I'm fairly sure that this is a misquote from Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In
my copy, the original reads:

Trolling is a art she told herselves
The Lady of Shallot.

I would have said an art, but I'm no poet.

Good to know that you're still out there Dan. But I'm a bit puzzled by
your use of the term ankle biters. Here in NZ it generally connotes
(or is denotes the correct term?) what in the US would, I believe,
be referred to as rug rats. Does it have a different meaning in the
real world?

Re: [9fans] music storage

[Winston Kodogo]

 how much storage do 10,000 Maniacs take?

Eleven. Preferably not pronounced with a Scottish Accent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU

Re: [9fans] Alternative Plan 9 Logo

[Winston Kodogo]

  I wonder who could decide to adopt it on behalf of the community?

 As I understand it, this list is not a community, but an
anarcho-syndicalist commune.

In which case the executive officer for the week can decide to adopt the
new logo, but all decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a
special bi-weekly meeting, by a simple majority in the case of purely
internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major (I
ORDER YOU TO BE QUIET - SIGNED BOYD (RIP)).

So my question is, do we need a simple majority to adopt the new logo, or
will a two-thirds majority be called for?

[9fans] Help requested. Boyd, where are you?

[Winston Kodogo]

OK, so my employer is lending out raspberry pis for cool demo projects to
be completed in a couple of weeks. I was thinking of doing a Sudoku solver
in Plan 9. I have written working C code for a command line solver using
Knuth's exact cover / dancing links algorithm. Advice sought on how to
program the UI to look not totally shite. Or indeed, to exist at all. I
should say that I have yet to install Plan9 on the pi, so could be a big
ask. Any help, even abuse, will be accepted.

Re: [9fans] Help requested. Boyd, where are you?

[Winston Kodogo]

Yeah. I don't disagree with Boyd's views on Sudoku, as filtered through
Brucee. Although, I feel that Boyd would have expressed them by saying
something like When I hear the word Sudoku, I reach for my insert your
weapon of choice here. However, I have the solver code, thanks to Knuth.
The UI, thanks to Andrey. And the raspberry pi implementation, thanks to
Richard Miller. So will try to put them together, with the help of a young
colleague, who grew positively enthused at Richard's video on plan9 on the
pi, having been trained on a diet of Java and Windows, and said, when I
suggested that it might be easier to do something on Linux, said, no, we
have to use plan9.

In answer to Lucio, peripherals are keyboard, mouse, monitor.

Re: [9fans] Raspberry Pi: won't recognize the USB mouse

[Winston Kodogo]

I'm not sure if this is helpful at this, or indeed any, stage in the
conversation, but for me one of the great joys of using Richard's port has
been that it just works on real hardware without having to mess about, or
having to worry about esoterica about USB and chums. At least they're
esoterica to me as a Windows programmer. A few weeks back I was handed a pi
at work, which is in the antipodes where the current flows in the other
direction. I powered it via USB using the mains adapter that came with my
iPod (which provides 2.1A at 5+ volts, although the 1A version that comes
with the iPad mini also works fine)  plugged in a keyboard or two that were
lying around (Logitech K120 and some random Dell keyboard worked equally
well), plugged in a really cheap spare Logitech mouse that was also just
lying around, attached a random monitor borrowed from the IT guys
downstairs using an HDMI to DVI cable, and it all just worked. So my
feeling, based on cop instinct, as Steve McGarrett used to say, is Book
him, Dano. Oops, no, sorry, that was wrong. Book a mains USB power
adapter, Dano, and borrow or scrounge any old rubbishy peripherals that the
IT guys have lying around in a dusty cupboard, and find something that
works. And if that doesn't work, and you're not having fun, just give up
and try something else. Sorry to bang on, but the pi, Richard's port,
Andrey's code, and assorted documents, including Michael Covington's newbie
guide and Nemo's book, have made programming fun again for me.


On 3 March 2014 08:54, Richard Miller 9f...@hamnavoe.com wrote:

  also, according to the linux kernel, we should not be looking for
  configurations on anything that's not a hub.

 Personally I wouldn't look to the linux kernel as guidance for
 correct behaviour.  Especially when there's a published specification
 available.

 Every usb device has at least one configuration descriptor.  The usb
 spec allows for more than one, with a well-defined method for choosing
 between them (not supported by plan 9 usb infrastructure).  In
 practice though, it seems common for devices to ignore this and use some
 bizarre proprietary and undocumented way to switch configurations instead.
 Hence the need for abominations like the linux usb_modeswitch utility.

Re: [9fans] What is Plan9 exactly?

[Winston Kodogo]

Yeah, I'm mystified myself. Is this a troll or a serious enquiry? Trousers
rolled.


On 5 June 2014 15:10, OMAR RADWAN owemeac...@live.com wrote:

 I've been looking at plan9 on the internet and to say the truth, I'm
 mystified. What is it exactly? Is it meant to totally be better than Unix
 or any Unix-like system? How so? What kind of kernel does it use?

Re: [9fans] someone made a glenda key...

[Winston Kodogo]

Sating it tongue in cheek? I shudder to think what Boyd would have made
of that.

On 12 September 2014 02:43, andrey mirtchovski mirtchov...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Yes, of course :) I was sating it tongue in cheek.
 On Sep 11, 2014 8:24 AM, Steven Stallion sstall...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 1:53 AM, andrey mirtchovski
 mirtchov...@gmail.com wrote:
  The 2nd image shows glenda on an APL keyboard (now
  that's an unusual combination).
 
  fetishists.

 Aren't we all?

Re: [9fans] Annyoing modified by boyd

[Winston Kodogo]

FILE modified by boyd since last read strikes me as more useful than most
error messages I see these days. My only question is what particular weapon
Boyd would have used to modify the file.

On 17 September 2014 23:18, Ingo Krabbe ikrabbe@gmail.com wrote:

 Hey,

 using legacy bell-labs plan9 (I don't know the others), I often, that
 converges to always, get FILE modified by boyd since last read when
 editing a file on a cifs share with acme.

 The cifs main.c defines boyd as the modifying user (muid) in I2D and
 V2D, which are from fs.stat.

 From /sys/src/cmd/acme/exec.c:/putfile/+14

 if(d!=nil  runeeq(namer, nname, f-name, f-nname)){
 /* f-mtime+1 because when talking over NFS it's often off
 by a second */
 if(f-dev!=d-dev || f-qidpath!=d-qid.path ||
 f-mtime+1d-mtime){
 f-dev = d-dev;
 f-qidpath = d-qid.path;
 f-mtime = d-mtime;
 if(f-unread)
 warning(nil, %s not written; file already
 exists\n, name);
 else
 warning(nil, %s modified%s%s since last
 read\n, name, d-muid[0]? by :, d-muid);
 goto Rescue1;
 }
 }

 Hmm, possibly this is another time quirk, like that one from NFS. Does
 anyone know a good solution to that problem?

 Regards
 ikrabbe

Re: [9fans] Annyoing modified by boyd

[Winston Kodogo]

I'm not sure how kindly Boyd would have taken to being referred to as the
younger brother of void. I suspect not well, although I'm not sure which
particular weapon he would have reached for in this instance:
http://www.petting-zoo.net/~deadbeef/archive/1023.html

On 18 September 2014 21:09, Steve Simon st...@quintile.net wrote:

 FYI

 bill and trog are lifted from the names the dossrv file system generates,
 I assume bill is Bill Gates and trog is from the film [1], dos and by
 association cifs use old file structures which live under a rock.

 I needed a last modifier name and chose boyd as a little tribute to him,
 a man who gave me many a guilty chuckle over the years. He lives on
 in plan9 in some dusty corners (mainly in fortunes).

 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trog

 -Steve

Re: [9fans] Setting up Mail in Acme on the Raspberry Pi.

[Winston Kodogo]

Much as I love Plan9, only a masochist would use it for email.I agreed with
Carmack as recently as 1997: I spent a few months running Plan9. It has an
achingly elegent internal structure, but a user interface that has been
asleep for the past decade.

On 14 October 2014 12:55, Anthony Sorace a...@9srv.net wrote:

 On Oct 13, 2014, at 12:46 , Eduardo Alvarez astrochelon...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  Have you considered other mailbox formats, such as maildir, for
 instance? Seems
  that it could solve at least some of the problem.

 nupas uses a maildir-like format. It helps tremendously.

 Really: if you're doing mail on Plan 9, you want to be running nupas.

Re: [9fans] Setting up Mail in Acme on the Raspberry Pi.

[Winston Kodogo]

https://www.apple.com/nz/support/icloud/mail-notes/

Sorry, not a patch as such.


On 14 October 2014 15:51, Kurt H Maier k...@sciops.net wrote:

 Quoting Winston Kodogo kod...@gmail.com:

  Much as I love Plan9, only a masochist would use it for email.I agreed
 with
 Carmack as recently as 1997: I spent a few months running Plan9. It has
 an
 achingly elegent internal structure, but a user interface that has been
 asleep for the past decade.



 patches welcome

Re: [9fans] Setting up Mail in Acme on the Raspberry Pi.

[Winston Kodogo]

i9factotum? It's a go!

On 14 October 2014 16:08, Skip Tavakkolian skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com
wrote:

 iCloud! Yes! Let's do that! It might even be secure on Plan 9 :)
 On Oct 13, 2014 8:01 PM, Winston Kodogo kod...@gmail.com wrote:

 https://www.apple.com/nz/support/icloud/mail-notes/

 Sorry, not a patch as such.


 On 14 October 2014 15:51, Kurt H Maier k...@sciops.net wrote:

 Quoting Winston Kodogo kod...@gmail.com:

  Much as I love Plan9, only a masochist would use it for email.I agreed
 with
 Carmack as recently as 1997: I spent a few months running Plan9. It
 has an
 achingly elegent internal structure, but a user interface that has been
 asleep for the past decade.



 patches welcome

Re: [9fans] Setting up Mail in Acme on the Raspberry Pi.

[Winston Kodogo]

Skip was being sarcastic? Who knew???

But in answer to Steve's question, the only things I would add to Plan9 are
a mail program and Web browser that I can work out how to use even in the
trance-like state of supreme enlightenment that can only be achieved when
one has consumed far too much gin. Apple Mail  Safari work for me, more's
the pity.

On 15 October 2014 09:29, Wes Kussmaul w...@reliableid.com wrote:


 Oh, I knew that...

 :(  :(  :(



 On 10/14/2014 04:03 PM, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:

 Wes, i was being sarcastic in my reply to the suggestion that iCloud (or
 any iSplat) products should be emulated on Plan 9.

  -Skip


 On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 12:09 PM, Wes Kussmaul w...@reliableid.com wrote:

  Skip, why settle for might even be secure while using the platform of
 one of the companies that makes a practice of burglarizing your information
 home?

 Why not use something like SpiderOak
 https://spideroak.com/?utm_expid=14446725-7.EXfixEIwRZmffqInbsytsg.0

 - which lets you keep and control the encryption keys.

 Or perhaps even better, the owners of SpiderOak put out a toolkit called
 Crypton https://crypton.io/ that lets you roll your own.

 Wes



 On 10/13/2014 11:08 PM, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:

 iCloud! Yes! Let's do that! It might even be secure on Plan 9 :)
 On Oct 13, 2014 8:01 PM, Winston Kodogo kod...@gmail.com wrote:

  https://www.apple.com/nz/support/icloud/mail-notes/

  Sorry, not a patch as such.


 On 14 October 2014 15:51, Kurt H Maier k...@sciops.net wrote:

 Quoting Winston Kodogo kod...@gmail.com:

  Much as I love Plan9, only a masochist would use it for email.I agreed
 with
 Carmack as recently as 1997: I spent a few months running Plan9. It
 has an
 achingly elegent internal structure, but a user interface that has been
 asleep for the past decade.



  patches welcome





  --

 Wes Kussmaul
 The Authenticity Institute
 738 Main Street
 Waltham, MA 02451

 office +1 781 790 1674
 mobile +1 781 330 1881

 “Try this fruit, and by the way if a bunch of people collectively calling 
 themselves Arthur Andersen signs something it’s the same as if a person 
 named Arthur Andersen signed it.”

  - The Serpent



 --

 Wes Kussmaul
 The Authenticity Institute
 738 Main Street
 Waltham, MA 02451

 office +1 781 790 1674
 mobile +1 781 330 1881

 “Try this fruit, and by the way if a bunch of people collectively calling 
 themselves Arthur Andersen signs something it’s the same as if a person named 
 Arthur Andersen signed it.”

   - The Serpent

Re: [9fans] Setting up Mail in Acme on the Raspberry Pi.

[Winston Kodogo]

Now I'm even more confused than normal. cpu: can't dial: plan9.lanl.gov:
The operation completed successfully.

This is a Windows error message?

On 23 October 2014 09:04, Quintile st...@quintile.net wrote:

 I fear a gnu style recursive definition coming on...

 -Steve





 On 22 Oct 2014, at 19:14, Skip Tavakkolian skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 i think this situation is more fortune-worthy than the fortune that caused
 it.


 On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 8:19 AM, Mats Olsson plan9@gmail.com wrote:

 I kind of had a feeling it was that way because when installing again
 on another card, I got another message with this: If you think out
 loud you're about to get a lot of ememies; as the bottom line (don't
 remember the exact words).

 2014-10-22 17:12 GMT+02:00, Kurt H Maier k...@sciops.net:
  Quoting Charles Forsyth charles.fors...@gmail.com:
 
  On 22 October 2014 15:34, Kurt H Maier k...@sciops.net wrote:
 
  Quoting Mats Olsson plan9@gmail.com:
 
 
   cpu: can't dial: plan9.lanl.gov: The operation completed
 successfully.
 
 
  this exact error message is in the fortunes file.
 
 
  oh well, that explains that: obviously the rio start-up on the pi runs
  fortunes, to aid debugging.
 
  That is precisely what is happening.  The startup script Steve Simon
 sent
  runs his logwin script, which looks like this:
 
  #!/bin/rc
 
  fortune
  calendar -y
  news
  echo
 
  exec rc -i
 
  ...now compare Mats' output:
 
  cpu: can't dial: plan9.lanl.gov: The operation completed successfully.
  calendar: can't open /usr/glenda/lib/calendar:
  '/usr/glenda/lib/calendar' does not exist
 
  khm
 
 
 

Re: [9fans] Setting up Mail in Acme on the Raspberry Pi.

[Winston Kodogo]

Well, to clarify, in the old days, if a Windows function call failed, you'd
call GetLastError to get a numerical error code, and FormatMessage to get a
string describing the error, So if the error code was 0, meaning that the
windows call succeeded, FormatMessage would return The operation completed
successfully. Obviously that's completely stupid.

On 24 October 2014 09:45, Winston Kodogo kod...@gmail.com wrote:

 Now I'm even more confused than normal. cpu: can't dial: plan9.lanl.gov:
 The operation completed successfully.

 This is a Windows error message?

 On 23 October 2014 09:04, Quintile st...@quintile.net wrote:

 I fear a gnu style recursive definition coming on...

 -Steve





 On 22 Oct 2014, at 19:14, Skip Tavakkolian skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 i think this situation is more fortune-worthy than the fortune that
 caused it.


 On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 8:19 AM, Mats Olsson plan9@gmail.com wrote:

 I kind of had a feeling it was that way because when installing again
 on another card, I got another message with this: If you think out
 loud you're about to get a lot of ememies; as the bottom line (don't
 remember the exact words).

 2014-10-22 17:12 GMT+02:00, Kurt H Maier k...@sciops.net:
  Quoting Charles Forsyth charles.fors...@gmail.com:
 
  On 22 October 2014 15:34, Kurt H Maier k...@sciops.net wrote:
 
  Quoting Mats Olsson plan9@gmail.com:
 
 
   cpu: can't dial: plan9.lanl.gov: The operation completed
 successfully.
 
 
  this exact error message is in the fortunes file.
 
 
  oh well, that explains that: obviously the rio start-up on the pi runs
  fortunes, to aid debugging.
 
  That is precisely what is happening.  The startup script Steve Simon
 sent
  runs his logwin script, which looks like this:
 
  #!/bin/rc
 
  fortune
  calendar -y
  news
  echo
 
  exec rc -i
 
  ...now compare Mats' output:
 
  cpu: can't dial: plan9.lanl.gov: The operation completed successfully.
  calendar: can't open /usr/glenda/lib/calendar:
  '/usr/glenda/lib/calendar' does not exist
 
  khm
 
 
 

[9fans] Problem with pf9 on Windows 8.1

[Winston Kodogo]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I'm trying to run pf9
version of acme on Windows 8.1. If I try to use mouse button 3, it always
barfs. Button 3 works fine in sam. Has anyone else had this problem and
found a solution?

Re: [9fans] New Language [Myrddin] On Plan 9/amd64

[Winston Kodogo]

Hmm. Didn't Tolstoy write a short story called How Many Languages does a
Man Need?

On 4 January 2015 at 21:59, Ori Bernstein o...@eigenstate.org wrote:

 Myrddin is a language that I put together for fun, but which has developed
 delusions of usefulness. It's a complete reinvention of the wheel, from the
 ground up. Some of the major things you'll notice about it:

 - Type inference. Types are inferred across the whole program.
 - Algebraic data types.
 - And their friend, pattern matching.
 - Generics.
 - A package system.
 - Low level control over memory and such.
 - (Almost) no runtime library.
 - Self contained.

 For more details, you can look at the language website:

 http://eigenstate.org/myrddin

 Myrddin has been ported to Plan 9/amd64, tested on 9front. I haven't been
 able
 to get 9atom's amd64 kernel to boot on virtual hardware yet, so it hasn't
 been
 tested there.

 The compiler and libstd should build out of the box using the provided
 mkfiles. The libs used for mbld currently need either mbld or gnu make in
 order to build, or you can run myrbuild by hand. I've provided a script
 that
 does the latter.

 Almost all Plan 9 system calls are directly supported in libsys.
 As with Linux/Unix, only amd64 targets are supported at the moment.

 To bootstrap the code on Plan 9, the following script is provided:

 http://eigenstate.org/myrddin/getmyr.rc

 You can grab the script and run it as follows:

 ; hget http://eigenstate.org/myrddin/getmyr.rc  getmyr.rc
 ; chmod +x getmyr.rc
 ; getmyr.rc
 ...a lot of cloning and building happens...
 ; sam helloworld.myr

 For ease of hacking on Plan 9, I've added mercurial mirrors of the
 compiler and some libraries to bitbucket:

 http://bitbucket.com/oridb/mc
 http://bitbucket.com/oridb/libbio
 http://bitbucket.com/oridb/libregex
 http://bitbucket.com/oridb/libcryptohash
 http://bitbucket.com/oridb/libdate
 http://bitbucket.com/oridb/mbld

 There are a number of TODOs, of course:

 - Libdate needs to learn how to parse Plan 9 timezone files.
 - Libstd needs to get a smarter allocator for large allocations.
 - More libraries: lib9p, libdraw, etc... all need to be written.
 - A bit more thought needs to be given nicer, portable APIs.
 - More Plan 9 integration.

 And general work to get Myrddin to the point of day to day usability,
 int terms of faster binaries, more libraries, and so on.

 Still, if anyone finds this interesting/useful -- have at it. If you
 manage to do something neat, let me know!

 --
 Ori Bernstein o...@eigenstate.org

Re: [9fans] Web Gardens

[Winston Kodogo]

To be honest, I didn’t understand the “Grey Gardens” reference until I used
this new “Google” thing that Erik recommends. Were I not scared of being
called silly by Skip, I would recommend merging this exciting new potential
fork of Plan9 into the forthcoming "Great British Code Off" fork of Plan9,
of which I am the sole proprietor. But I won’t do that. Instead, I will
just say "On your marks, get set, Code!".



On Oct 17, 2015, at 2:51 PM, Jeff Sickel  wrote:

Next thing we know someone will produce a Grey Gardens fork of Plan 9.

Now that I said it, it’s likely the GPL version is the Plan 9 Grey Gardens
tree.

-jas



On Oct 15, 2015, at 10:53 PM, Prof Brucee  wrote:

Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me. No fish slapping.

On 16/10/2015 2:50 PM, "Kurt H Maier"  wrote:
On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 07:10:01PM -0700, erik quanstrom wrote:
>
> i'd recommend a google search
>
>
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant=1=2=UTF-8#q=web%20garden
>

I deeply apologize for failing to summarize to your satisfaction.  I
have bookmarked the url you provided and welcome any feedback I Can use
to improve my understanding in this matter.

khm

[9fans] Glad tidings of comfort and joy

[Winston Kodogo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwDOqsu0GZw

Re: [9fans] The Plan 9/"right" way to do Facebook

[Winston Kodogo]

That's an awfully long troll. Some people have a lot of time on their
hands. And it's not yet April Fool's day, even in New Zealand.

On 31 March 2016 at 12:40,  wrote:

> Greetings, 9fans!
>
> We all know that Plan 9 started as a retrospective "re-take" on UNIX,
> occasionally referred to as "UNIX done right".  This has led to
> differences between "the Plan 9 way" of doing something vs. "the UNIX
> way" of doing it, such as those highlighted by the infamous "Unix to
> Plan 9 command translation" page on the Plan 9 wiki.  More generally,
> this can be viewed as the difference between the "right" way to do
> something versus the "popular" way to do it.
>
> So, my question is, what would be the Plan 9/"right" way to do Facebook?
> Stated differently, if social networking were to be re-imagined and
> re-done "right" this time, how would it be done?
>
>
> E-Mail
> ==
>
> The obvious answer that comes to mind is e-mail.  It worked well for
> decades.  Although 9fans appear to continue this tradition in grand
> style, using e-mail for social networking poses a number of problems:
>
> 1. _Spam.  The fact that SMTP doesn't authenticate senders of e-mail
>messages has led to a proliferation of spam which has greatly
>burdened the medium, requiring complex workarounds that usually put
>legitimate mail at risk of misclassification as "junk".
>
> 2. _`Subject lines`.  Few people seem to know how to choose an
>appropriate "Subject:" line, anymore.  People will use subjects like
>"tonight's meeting", without specifying what group is meeting, when
>the meeting is, or what it is about.  When the topic of a thread
>drifts from its original topic, few people remember (or even think)
>to update the Subject: line.  Often, when one person wants to send a
>second person an e-mail, the first person will simply reply to the
>last message they received from the second person, even if it was on
>a completely different subject.  (This, of course, creates false
>relationships between the Subject: and References: fields used to
>define threads.)
>
>Despite the fact that most MUAs (including Webmail_) offer the
>ability to automatically sort e-mail into different categories, many
>people don't know how to sort incoming mail.  When they get too much
>e-mail in their "Inbox", the become annoyed and confused.
>
>These problems were addressed, somewhat, by the advent of the Web
>forums which were popular in the 2000's.  On a Web forum, moderators
>could reclassify posts and reorganize threads to better reflect their
>content.
>
> 3. Listservs.  For people familiar with mailing lists, sending commands
>to list servers is not difficult.  Unfortunately, many people don't
>understand listservs, and want some way to subscribe to and/or
>unsubscribe from mailing lists using a Web page.  While some
>listservs provide a Web interface in addition to an SMTP interface,
>it is becoming more and more common for mailing lists to append
>footers containing "unsubscribe" links.  This information (which
>usually duplicates information found in message headers and should be
>obvious to anyone who knows how to use the listserv, anyway) pollutes
>the content of the messages.  Furthermore, if a message containing
>such links is forwarded to someone else, the final recipient could
>unsubscribe the forwarding party from the list without his or her
>consent.
>
> 4. _`HTML mail`.  Nowadays, people will write things in e-mail messages
>like, "I've highlighted the changes in red".  On my display, plain
>text is rendered in black-on-white!  Or they'll write something like
>"here's the link," without specifying any URL.  You have to dig into
>the text/html part to find it.  Forwarding an HTML message to other
>recipients can also pose security risks, if _hyperlinks in the
>message offer access to personal information.  HTML mail also makes
>e-mail messages five times the size they need to be.
>
> 5. MIME.  It's great to be able to attach small files to e-mail
>messages, but there are WAY too many people who will just blindly
>attach Word Perfect, Microsuck Word, or ZIP files to their messages.
>I've even seen otherwise "well-educated" lawyers do this.
>
> 6. Large attachments.  MIME permits relatively small files to be
>attached to messages, but it is not really meant for distribution of
>large _files such as large images, audio files, movie files, ISO
>images, or tarballs.  For people like us, that's not a problem; we
>just upload the file to a server and post its location, along with a
>brief description of the file.  People who do not know how to do this
>will typically end up jumping through hoops to upload their file to
>some dreaded third-party service like Flickr or YouTub, and then post
>a link to that.
>
> 7. 

Re: [9fans] OT: Ubiquitous data vs. Reality, WAS: Re: The Plan 9/"right" way to do Facebook

[Winston Kodogo]

Alas, I can make absolutely no sense of anything from the cigarmeister.

But then again an inability to tell what's true at all could be an emerging
trajedy of these commons.

Or perhaps there is some creative merit in this.

Where is Boyd when you need him?

On 4 April 2016 at 23:37, hiro <23h...@gmail.com> wrote:

> here at my university mensa is just the place where the food tastes the
> worst.
>
>

Re: [9fans] Any demand for a supported Windows version of p9port?

[Winston Kodogo]

Hey Chris

Cygwin is an option. Albeit one I wouldn’t use. The guys who did pf9 used 
mingw. Which I also wouldn’t use. I like MS Visual Studio with access to the 
native libraries on the platform of my choice - so colour me bigoted.

I was kind of wondering if there was an option for people who like Microsoft 
development tools to build Plan9 tools, which are admittedly a minority taste 
in the Windows world, without spending several weeks installing 3rd party tools 
and then being told how stupid they are.
> On 28/07/2016, at 1:27 PM, Chris McGee  wrote:
> 
> I was thinking of using Cygwin to see would be capable of compiling p9p.
> 
> Chris
> 
>> On Jul 27, 2016, at 9:08 PM, Andrew Simmons  wrote:
>> 
>> What the subject line says.
>> 
>> This is not remotely intended to disrespect Sean Quinlan’s 9pm, or the guys 
>> who did pf9. I’m just asking because there are still chunks of p9p that I’d 
>> like to have under Windows. Some of the chunks I want (mostly the command 
>> line utilities, also sam, not so much acme) I’ve managed to build under 
>> Microsoft Visual Studio (note to self - wash mouth out and learn to eschew 
>> IDEs and love mk ((also, sub-note to self, don’t use syntax highlighting)))
>> 
>> But, and this is a large but, there are parts of p9port that seem to be 
>> dependent on the Unix world - unix pipes for one, the stuff about sigjmp for 
>> another.
>> 
>> So, what the subject line says, but also - how much of the Unix-specific 
>> stuff in the current p9p is essential to a port to Windows?
>> 
>> Go in peace
>> James V Choate XXXVI
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 

Re: [9fans] Is 9Fans dead or alive

[Winston Kodogo]

I personally have been technically dead for some time, but am still
receiving emails from the list, so the problem may be at your end. In which
case of course you won't see this. Bugger.

On 23 August 2016 at 12:00, Adriano Verardo  wrote:

> Hi, all
> I don'receive from the group since June.
> I've changed my subscription, opened another gmail account (mail-dot-com
> had problems),
> contacted 9fans staff etc etc
> Could anyone kindly le me know about problems or whatever else reason why
> 9fans seems to be mute ?
>
> Thanks.
>
>

Re: [9fans] Is 9Fans dead or alive

[Winston Kodogo]

Well, the meaning of the word "ilk" has always puzzled me. As in "Sir
Robert Pike of that Ilk". But then I'm not Scottish. Or Scotch, whichever
is correct. Me, I still lend a fraction of an ear to this group in the
increasingly vain hope of learning something.

Personally, I don't use Plan9, or even p9p, to get stuff done. I just like
to look at the code from time to time. I'm with Carmack on Plan9 circa
1997: " It has an achingly elegant internal structure, but a user interface
that has been asleep for the past decade." Add a couple of decades to that.

Also, don't be mean to Skip!

On 1 September 2016 at 09:36, stanley lieber  wrote:

> Skip Tavakkolian  wrote:
>
> >On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 11:43 AM stanley lieber  wrote:
> >
> >> Steven Stallion  wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 1:40 AM, Kurt H Maier 
> >wrote:
> >> >> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 10:52:31PM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:
> >> >>> > plan 9 as more than a masturbatory aid.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> put up or shut up:
> >> >> ...
> >> >> Congratulations on your accomplishments!
> >> >
> >> >% fn ck { grep $* /n/sources/patch/*/email
> >/n/sources/patch/^(applied
> >> >maybe saved sorry)^/*/email >[2]/dev/null |wc -l}
> >> >% ck sstall...@gmail.com
> >> > 28
> >> >% ck k...@sciops.net
> >> >  0
> >> >
> >> >Perhaps it's better to be known for the occasional masturbatory
> >> >session than for being an incorrigible troll.
> >> >
> >> >Steve
> >>
> >> What's incorrigible is the way you people consistently reply to
> >questions
> >> from newbs with claims that it is trivial to do various tasks on Plan
> >9
> >> without ever quite revealing that 1.) it isn't, and 2.) you aren't
> >really
> >> referring to the task they suggested, anyway. Skip does this, Every.
> >> Single. Time. What is the point?
> >>
> >
> >you're assuming a person who is new to Plan 9, is new to computing,
> >system
> >admin or programming.
> >
> >easy means: "no different than setting up a cpu once you've configured
> >your
> >fs and auth".  adding entries for 8 rpi's in /lib/ndb/local and
> >/cfg/pxe is
> >as easy as cutting and pasting after the first one. they all run the
> >same
> >kernel.
> >
> >please take the hyperbole down a bit or provide instances for what you
> >claim i did. the internet has a long memory; http links would be
> >sufficient.
> >
> >regarding pi cluster, it was related to a work-in-progress i talked
> >about
> >at IWP9 2010.  i've shared as much detail as i could.
> >
> >
> >> What do you use that rpi "cluster" for, Skip? Do you mean to imply
> >some
> >> the availability of some facility for process migration? You know
> >none
> >> exists.
> >>
> >> The latest amusing evolution is a parade of replies from the usual
> >> suspects where it's never quite clear which of them are promoting or
> >> denigrating the degraded web-centric nature of modern computing.
> >First
> >> various ribbons and medals associated with historic Plan 9 campaigns
> >are
> >> displayed and then the same noble campaigners suggest that Plan 9
> >users are
> >> cave men clinging to stone tools. I think the quips are so clever
> >precisely
> >> because their target is indeterminate. Great, you're funny, but
> >again, what
> >> is the point?
> >>
> >> How does any of this clarify matters for interested newbs?
> >>
> >> My personal favorite aspect of this tiresome dance is the eventual
> >> denunciation of trolls. Here, in the spiritual home of Mark V Shaney!
> >>
> >> The problem is not trolling. The problem is low to medium quality
> >> trolling, performed by armchair quarterbacks who want credit for
> >being Plan
> >> 9 Gandalfs but who are unwilling to provide the simple service of
> >speaking
> >> in words that make sense. Mothra forbid any should cast aspersions
> >upon the
> >> sacred world wide web,
> >> bringer of the paycheck and dresser of the tongue.
> >>
> >
> >and yet, it is you and your ilk who claim the mantle of the true
> >keepers of
> >the faith, beating back the evildoers.
> >
> >
> >>
> >> Kurt provides free hosting for the 9front mercurial repository, after
> >> Google found better things to do with their time. Thanks, Kurt.
> >>
> >> sl
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
> "your ilk"
>
> What does that mean, exactly, Skip?
>
> http://fqa.9front.org
>
> What I say is that Plan 9 runs on my computer and I use it to do the
> things I use computers for. Documentation of the hows and whys can be found
> at the URL above. 9fans manage to consistently make fun of this idea while
> somehow simultaneously retaining an incredibly easily offended sense of
> ownership over anything mentioned on 9fans since 1993. Which is the real
> you? And why do quips become verboten only after you've contributed the
> quips you wanted to contribute?
>
> It's not so much keeping the flame as it is simply wanting to run the
> software to actually do things, and realizing that 

Re: [9fans] Musings on Interfaces

[Winston Kodogo]

Thanks to Brantley for his thoughtful musings. Me, I love many things about
Sam, but I just can't use it as my everyday editor. The structural regular
expression stuff is a work of genius, but I still find, such are my
limitations, that the user interface is just too clunky and retro.

On 2 September 2016 at 02:42, Brantley Coile  wrote:

> I think I’ve been a member of 9fans for its entire history. The earliest
> saved 9fans email in my /mail/box/bwc is dated 2001. But most of the time I
> have not said much. Given that the list isn’t very busy these days, and
> that I’m doing a lot of thinking about Plan 9, I thought I would post some
> of my seemingly random musings.
>
> Today I’m thinking about Plan 9’s interfaces.
>
> The reason for thinking about those is that I’ve just switch back to
> sam(1) from acme(1). No real reason, except for the old adage, a change is
> as good as a rest. I’ve been working 10 to 12 hour days, six days a week
> lately. I just wanted to change things a bit. Nothing against acme. I’ve
> been using it for many years and it is a great tool.
>
> The one time that Ken Thompson visited my office, when I had an office in
> Redwood City, he noticed that I was using acme and made a comment to the
> effect that “you are one of those.” He uses sam as do many of the folks who
> created Plan 9. Many of the original folks also use acme. I had did a poll
> years ago but can’t seem to find the results. As did I for many years, even
> after acme make its appearance. I had gotten a version of it working on my
> Unix using an Teletype 630 terminal, downloading the samterm and all. It
> was the main Plan 9 editor during my very brief tenure at Bell Labs in
> 1990. Acme came after I left with the arrival of Phil Winterbottom and his
> Alef language. The window manager was 8 1/2, which is like rio(1) without
> the bumpers one can use to move and resize the window.
>
> I must say that it is refreshing to be back with the older editor. I did
> have modify rio to look for an environmental variable that tells it not to
> do acme chording. I kept trying to use chording in sam and realized that
> part of the problem was that I could still use it in rio. So, I added a
> shell variable that turned that feature of rio off. After that subconscious
> chording stopped.
>
> I don’t think that sam is better than acme, or even the other way around.
> Both do a good job of getting the job done. They are different. And that
> difference has an affect on the way one used the system. When I use acme, I
> mostly stay in acme, using the win program for my shell access. It becomes
> a kind of integrated environment. With sam, I seem to use tools like sed
> and awk in the rio windows, like sed and awk more than when I was using
> acme. I had a similar thing happen when in the 1980’s I dropped vi for ed.
> I used ed until the 1990’s when I was able to switch to sam full time.
>
> But my use of edit commands in sam is the biggest difference between it
> and acme.
>
> In sam, I think more about how to modify things using the command window
> rather than moving the mouse around and clicking on things. The command
> language in acme using the Edit command is the same, but somehow it feels
> different. There is something to be said for the convenience of the command
> windows in sam.
>
> If I thought of the change as an experiment, one result would be the time
> it took me to not have to think about which editor I was using while
> working. Our tools should be, for the most part, transparent. It took about
> a week to switch back to sam from acme. That time is certainly a function
> of how much I used sam in the past.
>
> I’m very grateful to still be using these tools. It’s a very personal
> thing but for someone who first used 6th Edition Unix, ed and the old
> shell, and used all the versions of Unix that followed, these tools, both
> acme and sam, rio and 8 1/2, are an improvement to all that proceeded them
> and followed them.
>
>   Brantley Coile
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Musings on Interfaces

[Winston Kodogo]

What I mean is, all I want to do (tm pjp) is to open a new file by
selecting File/Open, as in every other application I use, not type a series
of arcane commands into the small window at the top.And then use the Sam
command language in the open file. And yes, I'm whining, and yes I have the
source. Where is Boyd to threaten you with assault weapons when you need
him?

On 2 September 2016 at 10:56, Winston Kodogo <kod...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks to Brantley for his thoughtful musings. Me, I love many things
> about Sam, but I just can't use it as my everyday editor. The structural
> regular expression stuff is a work of genius, but I still find, such are my
> limitations, that the user interface is just too clunky and retro.
>
> On 2 September 2016 at 02:42, Brantley Coile <brantleyco...@me.com> wrote:
>
>> I think I’ve been a member of 9fans for its entire history. The earliest
>> saved 9fans email in my /mail/box/bwc is dated 2001. But most of the time I
>> have not said much. Given that the list isn’t very busy these days, and
>> that I’m doing a lot of thinking about Plan 9, I thought I would post some
>> of my seemingly random musings.
>>
>> Today I’m thinking about Plan 9’s interfaces.
>>
>> The reason for thinking about those is that I’ve just switch back to
>> sam(1) from acme(1). No real reason, except for the old adage, a change is
>> as good as a rest. I’ve been working 10 to 12 hour days, six days a week
>> lately. I just wanted to change things a bit. Nothing against acme. I’ve
>> been using it for many years and it is a great tool.
>>
>> The one time that Ken Thompson visited my office, when I had an office in
>> Redwood City, he noticed that I was using acme and made a comment to the
>> effect that “you are one of those.” He uses sam as do many of the folks who
>> created Plan 9. Many of the original folks also use acme. I had did a poll
>> years ago but can’t seem to find the results. As did I for many years, even
>> after acme make its appearance. I had gotten a version of it working on my
>> Unix using an Teletype 630 terminal, downloading the samterm and all. It
>> was the main Plan 9 editor during my very brief tenure at Bell Labs in
>> 1990. Acme came after I left with the arrival of Phil Winterbottom and his
>> Alef language. The window manager was 8 1/2, which is like rio(1) without
>> the bumpers one can use to move and resize the window.
>>
>> I must say that it is refreshing to be back with the older editor. I did
>> have modify rio to look for an environmental variable that tells it not to
>> do acme chording. I kept trying to use chording in sam and realized that
>> part of the problem was that I could still use it in rio. So, I added a
>> shell variable that turned that feature of rio off. After that subconscious
>> chording stopped.
>>
>> I don’t think that sam is better than acme, or even the other way around.
>> Both do a good job of getting the job done. They are different. And that
>> difference has an affect on the way one used the system. When I use acme, I
>> mostly stay in acme, using the win program for my shell access. It becomes
>> a kind of integrated environment. With sam, I seem to use tools like sed
>> and awk in the rio windows, like sed and awk more than when I was using
>> acme. I had a similar thing happen when in the 1980’s I dropped vi for ed.
>> I used ed until the 1990’s when I was able to switch to sam full time.
>>
>> But my use of edit commands in sam is the biggest difference between it
>> and acme.
>>
>> In sam, I think more about how to modify things using the command window
>> rather than moving the mouse around and clicking on things. The command
>> language in acme using the Edit command is the same, but somehow it feels
>> different. There is something to be said for the convenience of the command
>> windows in sam.
>>
>> If I thought of the change as an experiment, one result would be the time
>> it took me to not have to think about which editor I was using while
>> working. Our tools should be, for the most part, transparent. It took about
>> a week to switch back to sam from acme. That time is certainly a function
>> of how much I used sam in the past.
>>
>> I’m very grateful to still be using these tools. It’s a very personal
>> thing but for someone who first used 6th Edition Unix, ed and the old
>> shell, and used all the versions of Unix that followed, these tools, both
>> acme and sam, rio and 8 1/2, are an improvement to all that proceeded them
>> and followed them.
>>
>>   Brantley Coile
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: [9fans] Is 9Fans dead or alive

[Winston Kodogo]

"Unless you count mobile devices, UIs in 2016 still function largely like
Windows 95."

Oddly, that's not true. Mind you, I've always been a Mac user. But I've
recently been spending some time in Excel VBA under Windows 10, and the
interface in the editor is still pure Windows 95,and boy does it ever show.

But yeah, the ribbon is a disaster. To the extent that people make money
selling add-ins to restore the classic menus.

On 1 September 2016 at 19:54, Julius Schmidt  wrote:

> Personally, I don't use Plan9, or even p9p, to get stuff done. I just like
>> to look at the code from time to time. I'm with Carmack on Plan9 circa
>> 1997:
>> " It has an achingly elegant internal structure, but a user interface that
>> has been asleep for the past decade." Add a couple of decades to that.
>>
>
> Two more decades of what?
>
> Unless you count mobile devices, UIs in 2016 still function largely like
> Windows 95.
> Incremental improvements, but no major innovations.
> Some bad mistakes (ribbons...).
>
> The best part is web interfaces, which continue to poorly imitate what
> Win95 could do 20 years ago.
>
> I'd rather stick to rio.
>
> aiju
>
>

Re: [9fans] Is 9Fans dead or alive

[Winston Kodogo]

And, on a related note:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/

On 31 August 2016 at 14:08, Winston Kodogo <kod...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah, but me, I prefer banging my head repeatedly against a brick wall
> while chewing broken glass to using this troff thing. In this case, the
> new-fangled stuff is just better, at least for normal people who just want
> to get stuff done.
>
> On 31 August 2016 at 12:51, Skip Tavakkolian <skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> some here still prefer hammer/chisel/stone to new-fangled
>> quill/ink/parchment
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 3:22 PM Chris McGee <sirnewton...@yahoo.ca>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Sure,
>>>
>>> I'm looking for plan9 user/enthusiast appropriate medium. Any
>>> suggestions?
>>>
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> > On Aug 30, 2016, at 6:18 PM, Eduardo Alvarez <astrochelon...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Are you keeping your progess public? It would be very educational to
>>> read.
>>> >
>>> >> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 7:10 PM, Chris McGee <sirnewton...@yahoo.ca>
>>> wrote:
>>> >> I am about a quarter of the way to a similar setup.
>>> >>
>>> >> My goal is to have a specialty for each of the Pi's (sensors,
>>> controller,
>>> >> terminal, router) without preventing them from doing general tasks.
>>> I'm
>>> >> hoping to eventually connect up some Pi zeros as leaf nodes for just
>>> >> sensor/control and plumb through 9P via UART pins.
>>> >>
>>> >> Chris
>>> >>
>>> >> On Aug 30, 2016, at 3:36 PM, Skip Tavakkolian <
>>> skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> It is straightforward and easy:
>>> >>
>>> >> https://plus.google.com/+SkipTavakkolian/posts/Fb846KhBMM6
>>> >>
>>> >> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 11:54 AM Eduardo Alvarez <
>>> astrochelon...@gmail.com>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >>>
>>> >>> I mostly lurk around here, as I'm greener than green when it comes to
>>> >>> plan 9. At some point in time, a friend and I were discussing setting
>>> >>> up a small-sized computing cluster for small scale distributed
>>> >>> computations. I was keen on the idea of using inexpensive hardware
>>> (we
>>> >>> even joked about using a truckloads of Raspberry Pis), and plan 9
>>> >>> seemed like an excellent candidate for the infrastructure. The
>>> biggest
>>> >>> challenge was porting software to Plan 9. Sadly, the idea never took
>>> >>> off. It would be a fun experiment.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Eduardo Alvarez
>>> >>>
>>> >>> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 3:41 PM, Jules Merit
>>> >>> <jules.merit.eurocorp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>>> Well let's hope someone does something. Mark-my-words is writing
>>> >>>> beautiful
>>> >>>> code that has already been done.
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> Push a little button, get .hot .chocolate.
>>> >>>> -- Russ Cox Cable von Shane
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> On Aug 30, 2016 10:03 AM, "Skip Tavakkolian"
>>> >>>> <skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com>
>>> >>>> wrote:
>>> >>>>>
>>> >>>>> I heard that too (I think the woot was for Go on Plan 9/ARM).  I'm
>>> >>>>> sorry I
>>> >>>>> missed that meetup.
>>> >>>>>
>>> >>>>> I've been thinking about setting up a meetup for 9fans in Seattle
>>> area.
>>> >>>>> There seems to be renewed interest (or perhaps it's my wishful
>>> >>>>> thinking).
>>> >>>>>
>>> >>>>>
>>> >>>>> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 9:27 AM michaelian ennis
>>> >>>>> <michaelian.en...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>> On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 12:26 PM, Skip Tavakkolian
>>> >>>>>> <skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>>> as a 9fan, I can say, not dead yet. In fact the population of
>>> 9fans
>>> >>>>>>> in
>>> >>>>>>> my neighborhood has doubled.
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>> And for the county it has at least tripled.  I heard at least one
>>> >>>>>> other
>>> >>>>>> woot for Plan9 at Brad Fitzpatrick's talk last week.  :)
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>> Ian
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>

Re: [9fans] Is 9Fans dead or alive

[Winston Kodogo]

Yeah, but me, I prefer banging my head repeatedly against a brick wall
while chewing broken glass to using this troff thing. In this case, the
new-fangled stuff is just better, at least for normal people who just want
to get stuff done.

On 31 August 2016 at 12:51, Skip Tavakkolian 
wrote:

> some here still prefer hammer/chisel/stone to new-fangled
> quill/ink/parchment
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 3:22 PM Chris McGee  wrote:
>
>> Sure,
>>
>> I'm looking for plan9 user/enthusiast appropriate medium. Any suggestions?
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> > On Aug 30, 2016, at 6:18 PM, Eduardo Alvarez 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Are you keeping your progess public? It would be very educational to
>> read.
>> >
>> >> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 7:10 PM, Chris McGee 
>> wrote:
>> >> I am about a quarter of the way to a similar setup.
>> >>
>> >> My goal is to have a specialty for each of the Pi's (sensors,
>> controller,
>> >> terminal, router) without preventing them from doing general tasks. I'm
>> >> hoping to eventually connect up some Pi zeros as leaf nodes for just
>> >> sensor/control and plumb through 9P via UART pins.
>> >>
>> >> Chris
>> >>
>> >> On Aug 30, 2016, at 3:36 PM, Skip Tavakkolian <
>> skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> It is straightforward and easy:
>> >>
>> >> https://plus.google.com/+SkipTavakkolian/posts/Fb846KhBMM6
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 11:54 AM Eduardo Alvarez <
>> astrochelon...@gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> I mostly lurk around here, as I'm greener than green when it comes to
>> >>> plan 9. At some point in time, a friend and I were discussing setting
>> >>> up a small-sized computing cluster for small scale distributed
>> >>> computations. I was keen on the idea of using inexpensive hardware (we
>> >>> even joked about using a truckloads of Raspberry Pis), and plan 9
>> >>> seemed like an excellent candidate for the infrastructure. The biggest
>> >>> challenge was porting software to Plan 9. Sadly, the idea never took
>> >>> off. It would be a fun experiment.
>> >>>
>> >>> Eduardo Alvarez
>> >>>
>> >>> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 3:41 PM, Jules Merit
>> >>>  wrote:
>>  Well let's hope someone does something. Mark-my-words is writing
>>  beautiful
>>  code that has already been done.
>> 
>>  Push a little button, get .hot .chocolate.
>>  -- Russ Cox Cable von Shane
>> 
>> 
>>  On Aug 30, 2016 10:03 AM, "Skip Tavakkolian"
>>  
>>  wrote:
>> >
>> > I heard that too (I think the woot was for Go on Plan 9/ARM).  I'm
>> > sorry I
>> > missed that meetup.
>> >
>> > I've been thinking about setting up a meetup for 9fans in Seattle
>> area.
>> > There seems to be renewed interest (or perhaps it's my wishful
>> > thinking).
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 9:27 AM michaelian ennis
>> >  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 12:26 PM, Skip Tavakkolian
>> >>  wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> as a 9fan, I can say, not dead yet. In fact the population of
>> 9fans
>> >>> in
>> >>> my neighborhood has doubled.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> And for the county it has at least tripled.  I heard at least one
>> >> other
>> >> woot for Plan9 at Brad Fitzpatrick's talk last week.  :)
>> >>
>> >> Ian
>> >
>>
>>
>>

Re: [9fans] Nemo's Opus

[Winston Kodogo]

To add to the previous comments, I'm a huge fan of Nemo's “Introduction to
Operating Systems Abstractions”:

https://lsub.org/who/nemo/9.intro.pdf

It's just a brilliant guide to finding your way around the system, and
doing some programming in it, especially if you're not a kernel-head and
talk of "ring 0" makes your brain hurt.

Not that my being a huge fan of anything of anything is in general a
recommendation, but in this case I'm right.

On 10 September 2016 at 07:36, Sergey Zhilkin  wrote:

> 5 cents from me, as I'm fan of Nemo's writings (and code also) link to his
> papers https://lsub.org/who/nemo/papers.html
>
> 2016-09-09 18:54 GMT+03:00 Brantley Coile :
>
>> I’ve been reading Nemo’s “Notes on the Plan 9 3rd edition Kernel Source”
>> after a number of years. Three things struck me on this reading of what is
>> a great and much appreciated work. First, is what a good job Francisco did
>> with this work. Even though he never finished it, having been overtaking, I
>> think, by the 4th edition, it is a very good introduction to an operating
>> system suitable for instruction in a undergraduate or graduate class in
>> operating systems. I, fortunately, don’t have to teach, but if I did, I
>> would certainly use the work.
>>
>> Second, I’m struck by how much larger the system had grown by the time
>> Nemo wrote the commentary. I had the good fortune to read John Lion’s
>> commentary on Plan 9 during my brief tenure at Bell Labs in 1990. If I
>> remember right, the kernel I was using was bout 25,000 lines. The first
>> version I used outside the Labs was the 2nd edition it weighs in at a hefty
>> 39,000 lines. The current system I’m running, the 32 bit one, not the 64
>> bit one, is 140,000 lines. I’m not sure the size of the 3rd edition, but
>> the growth is interesting.
>>
>> The third thing that struct me is the changes in the Intel architecture
>> since the original PC based port. The first Plan 9 for PC ran on AT 386
>> machines in the 1990’s, if I remember right. Those were the days of ISA and
>> EISA and before PCI made it’s plug-and-play appearance on the scene. It
>> seems that while the PC stuff has kept up with most of the many changes in
>> the Intel hardware platform over the years, there is still some cruft from
>> the old days.
>>
>> All very interesting to think about. I highly recommend Nemo’s book.
>> Here’s a link to it.
>>
>> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.75.
>> 5409=rep1=pdf
>>
>>   Brantley Coile
>>   b...@coraid.com
>>   http://coraid.com
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> С наилучшими пожеланиями
> Жилкин Сергей
> With best regards
> Zhilkin Sergey
>

Re: [9fans] Why does Plan 9 use “snarf” instead of “copy”?

[Winston Kodogo]

Channeling my inner Quine here. Did you mean:

The operation is not "copy" but "snarf". It's called "snarf" because
snarf is what it does.

Of course the White Knight would also have asked what the name of the
operation was called.

But be that as it may, a simple explanation of the difference between
"snarf" and "copy" would be welcome, especially since under Windows I can
snarf in Sam and paste into TextPad. Whereas I have to copy in Notepad and
paste into TextPad.

On 13 September 2016 at 00:27, Rob Pike  wrote:

> The operation is not to copy but to snarf. It's called snarf because
> snarf is what it does. There is no design document.
>
> -rob
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 8:44 PM, Alexander Kapshuk
>  wrote:
> > Both 'Zerox' and 'Snarf' are there:
> >
> > /sys/src/cmd/acme/cols.c:34
> > textinsert(t, 0, L"New Cut Paste Snarf Sort Zerox Delcol ", 38, TRUE);
> >
> > On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 1:38 PM, Robert Raschke 
> wrote:
> >> Hi Mateusz,
> >>
> >> as far as I remember, it was originally called "xerox". But that is
> >> trademarked. No idea where the word "snarf" comes from.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Robby
> >>
> >> On 12 Sep 2016 12:19, "Mateusz Piotrowski"  wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I've discovered Plan 9 recently and became curious about some
> >> design decisions.
> >>
> >> Why there is a snarf buffer and not a copy buffer?
> >>
> >> As it might seem to be a dull question, it is not. I am very
> >> interested in the reason behind this decision. I've browsed
> >> numerous websites (including cat-v.org and the 9fans archives)
> >> but I wasn't able to find anything about it.
> >>
> >> I decided to ask this question [1] on Unix & Linux StackExchange
> >> but its community doesn't seem to know the answer.
> >>
> >> My guess is that "copying" is not as an atomic action.
> >> "Copying" is in fact:
> >>
> >> - obtaining the content you want to copy (_snarfing_)
> >> - inserting the content where you want it to be (_pasting_)
> >>
> >> Hence the use of snarf instead of copy.
> >>
> >> Am I right? Is there a document / book / article where
> >> it is explained?
> >>
> >> Cheers!
> >>
> >> Mateusz Piotrowski
> >>
> >> [1]:
> >> http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/308943/why-does-
> plan-9-use-snarf-instead-of-copy
> >
>
>

Re: [9fans] 9front 5492 1919

[Winston Kodogo]

Jules isn't even as convincing as Mark V Shaney.. At least Choate was a
real person and knew a lot about soldering coaxial cables.

On 20 September 2016 at 11:56, Jules Merit <
jules.merit.eurocorp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Go away Die NSA release fails to go beyond...
> "759M memory: 256M kernel data. 503M user, 1128M swap"
>
> It got past 9boot, I can get ">"
> #Y0 Ricoh 476, #l0 i82557, #l1 wavelanpc, #A0 ac97 detected
>
> Any extra plan9.ini statements to try to get more verbose messages?
>
> I know this worked on plan9 since I wrote a driver for the wacom tablet
> earlier, perhaps it lost the CDROM drive after bios->kernel. before it was
> PXE.
>
> This system has hardware GL documented by intel and I was able to port
> MesaGL to plan9.
>

Re: [9fans] 9front 5492 1919

[Winston Kodogo]

Well, at least Jules know's where to put an apostrophe.
> On 22/09/2016, at 5:19 PM, Jules Merit <jules.merit.eurocorp...@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> You're spot on, he has to watch messages as they are sent as part of a social 
> experiment. #plan9doomport #RobKenDallas #multicast
> 9fan9rear9wuzhappening
> 
> 
>> On Sep 21, 2016 9:27 PM, "Winston Kodogo" <kod...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Jules isn't even as convincing as Mark V Shaney.. At least Choate was a real 
>> person and knew a lot about soldering coaxial cables.
>> 
>>> On 20 September 2016 at 11:56, Jules Merit 
>>> <jules.merit.eurocorp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Go away Die NSA release fails to go beyond...
>>> "759M memory: 256M kernel data. 503M user, 1128M swap"
>>> 
>>> It got past 9boot, I can get ">"
>>> #Y0 Ricoh 476, #l0 i82557, #l1 wavelanpc, #A0 ac97 detected
>>> 
>>> Any extra plan9.ini statements to try to get more verbose messages?
>>> 
>>> I know this worked on plan9 since I wrote a driver for the wacom tablet 
>>> earlier, perhaps it lost the CDROM drive after bios->kernel. before it was 
>>> PXE.
>>> 
>>> This system has hardware GL documented by intel and I was able to port 
>>> MesaGL to plan9.
>> 

Re: [9fans] Is 9Fans dead or alive

[Winston Kodogo]

Hey Adriano

It seems as if the list is not totally moribund after all, even if these
days people will insist on talking about Plan9 on it, rather than posting
informative digressions about almost everything else. I hope you got at
least some of the responses which your original message sparked. The list
is not mute, so if you're not getting the number of responses you expect,
checking your spam bucket is probably a good idea.

On Aug 23, 2016, at 12:29 PM, Adriano Verardo  wrote:

Thank you Winston, pleased to hear from you.
Really, my email accounts work (mail dot com too) .
And I've also received the 9fans subscription confirmation of changes.

I personally have been technically dead for some time, but am still
receiving emails from the list, so the problem may be at your end. In which
case of course you won't see this. Bugger.

On 23 August 2016 at 12:00, Adriano Verardo  wrote:

   Hi, all
   I don'receive from the group since June.
   I've changed my subscription, opened another gmail account
   (mail-dot-com had problems),
   contacted 9fans staff etc etc
   Could anyone kindly le me know about problems or whatever else
   reason why
   9fans seems to be mute ?

   Thanks.

[9fans] Job interview questions

[Winston Kodogo]

Excellent suggestions by Kurt. I'm sorely tempted to submit them to the
recruiter, but I don't think he'd get the joke.

[9fans] Slap me if you've seen this

[Winston Kodogo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kEJoWfobpA

Re: [9fans] Blit

[Winston Kodogo]

Well, such are my limitations, I don't give two short smegs about the Blit
or "The Labs", Johnny come latelelys that they are, promoting new editors
such as "ed". Instead of edt, the one true editor. But when I was a lad,
these many years ago, we did have to pick up the phone - without dial,
there was no dial - wait for the operator at the Sanderstead exchange and
ask the operator to connect us.

On 27 April 2017 at 14:42, Shane Morris  wrote:

> Dear God, big old working exchanges?!
>
> We had a tiny little relay logic step by step PABX at trade school,
> adjusting her was punishment detail. Well, it *was* until they worked out
> I actually enjoyed getting the old girl to make party tricks...
>
> I wonder if I *am* actually allowed into the US these days...? Likely
> not... perhaps I can see some photos instead?
>
> Cheers mate!
>
> On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 10:57 AM, Bruce Ellis 
> wrote:
>
>> For those interested in the Blit and other stuff from the labs,
>> particularly if you are in the Seattle area, you might like to contact
>> s...@sdf.lonestar.org who is the Associated Curator of the Communications
>> Museum. He gave me a tour and I introduced him to games/crabs.
>>
>> Big old telephone exchanges in working order are fun!
>>
>> brucee
>>
>
>