No, *all* things in Plan 9 were so I could write a windowing system the way I wanted. Well, that and Ken storing files the way he wanted.
But those truly were the driving motivations. Glad you like the result. -rob On Tue, Jun 30, 2026 at 10:22 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > Here is the fourth document in the Principia Softwarica series: > https://aryx.github.io/assets/pdfs/Windows-1.0.pdf > It documents the full source code of rio, the Plan 9 windowing system. > > It is in my opinion the most beautiful program in Plan 9 > (and the best book in the series). rio itself is less than 6000 LOC! > It is insanely small. Like I said in my talk, xterm alone is 80 000 LOC! > and xterm is just a small compoment in the X window system. > > rio is the culmination of Plan 9; I think many things in Plan 9 were > designed so that Rob Pike could write a windowing system in 6000 LOC :) > rio is also an incredibly elegant concurrent program. You would > learn a lot about concurrent programming by reading its code. rio is > using many concurrent programming design pattern (worker pools, > cooperative threads to avoid locks, channels of channels, etc.). > > Enjoy. > > Again feedbacks are welcome and so are pull requests on the project: > https://github.com/aryx/principia-softwarica > > *9fans <https://9fans.topicbox.com/latest>* / 9fans / see discussions > <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans> + participants > <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/members> + delivery options > <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription> Permalink > <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T4fec171fec7e3845-Mde1fcefee7173357475f85e4> > ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T4fec171fec7e3845-M2aa08b2665722b7fb587bb13 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
