> On 5/17/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> > But if ever there was a market born to take best advantage of Plan9's long >> > suit, >> > handheld, or 'wearable' has to be the most obvious contender, and on power >> > nd >> > bandwidth consumption as much as CPU cycles or 'local' RAM capacity. >> > >> >> A friend and I are starting a project to create a simple wearable computer. >> We've >> got some hardware to get started; probably will begin with a laptop, our >> camera >> viewfinder HMD, and a keyboard strapped around the waist (crude, I know) or >> some form of home-brewed chording device. I considered using Plan 9, but >> since >> we don't plan to include a pointing device yet, and the viewfinder can only >> display >> low resolutions and in black and white, I think we'll end up going with >> something >> designed to be used 80x24 characters at a time... Linux. If somebody can >> present >> me with some good reasons to use Plan 9 instead, we can try it, but I really >> don't think Plan 9 actually is ideal for a wearable. >> > > What are your requirements that disqualify Plan 9? Or is just a "feeling"? > > Coraid puts Plan 9 in their storage products. It's performing a > useful task, and you don't even need to know it's there. But it's > still powering the device. > > Small and simple can still be beautiful and elegant :-) >
You read the thing, right? I said that, with our display device, it's probably only feasible to work at a terminal. We connected the display to a Windows machine to test it. You can read a standard 80x24 terminal, but barely. Plan 9's support for just plain, old, no-windowing-system terminal use is pretty much nonexistent, so there's a good reason. Yes, we could cook up a lib/profile that automatically starts a big rc window, but you still need to use a pointing device of some kind. Yes, we can strap on a trackball, but I'd like to try reducing the amount of equipment hanging from my belt. If somebody would like to donate a Twiddler keyboard, then I'd be all for trying Plan 9. John
