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 >> >> >> >
