I developed a kiosk version of plan9 (based on 9front and legacy9) and am about to develop a single user desktop system. Those can coexist with the existing plan9 system.
I named the new service targets kiosk and desktop. Both work without rio. Currently I used initdraw, initmouse, initkeyboard, loadimage, flushimage from devdraw to avoid breaking of compatibility with the existing plan9 systems while the whole rendering of the windows is framebuffer based. Instead of the usual plan9 fonts I used regular truetypefonts. So my suggestions would be : 1) Define new service targets kiosk and desktop (Currently I do this in init or /user/.../lib/profile. This makes it possible for a user to start an alternative window manager or even a single applicaton (kiosk service) with a modern look and feel. 2) Define a layer between vga and devdraw perhaps vgafb which improves the performance for frame buffer rendered window managers. 3) Define events for mouse, keyboard, touchpad, windows which is based on notes managed by light threads inside the client app. Those three steps would protect the existing plan9 from changes and make it possible to only use the kernel, libraries, tools from alternative user interfaces. Plan9 is one of the smallest operating systems accompanied with a compiler and an abstraction which would attract much more developers and users if it had a modern user interface. We don't have to throw away anything and rio would even be able to run inside a window of a modern desktop. Plan9 has everything necessary to make it an attractive system not only for a handful of developers. The compilers, the portability, 9p, unicode, direct support for video hardware and its small size are fascinating. The only reason why it isn't recognized by more people is its GUI. I don't get the reason why we wouldn't extent it so we can use other GUI's while keeping the existing in respect of the developers who created this system. I will integrate this changes but I would prefer staying fully compatible to the existing projects legacy9 and 9front even more I would prefer not forking any of them but sharing my parts as contributions. What I need and what those changes need is a separation level between devdraw and the graphics hardware and a new event mechanism which can be based on notes or equals. I'm not a native English speaker so excuse the many mistakes. ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T2518f9e4fc10ed03-Mb4eb2005f779e611cdef4de4 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
