I'm also saying that if and when Plan 9 does gets this layout feature
that works like Oberon (which I tried, but never managed to get
installed, so I have no first-hand experience - more of Wirth's junk
in the trunk), people might be reluctant to leave Microsoft Word for
it. acme does not need to support .doc. However, I don't think people
would want to have a windowing environment where your commands are
not accessed via a Start menu or Dock, where you use the right mouse
button to create windows, and where there is no readily visible close
button in a familiar place. For Plan 9, it's what we, its users,
want, not what they, the rest of them that don't see us, want. If
they do Plan 9, they'll probably get the QEMU module from somewhere
in /n/sources/contrib to install Windows or go right to Inferno's wm/
wm (and Inferno's acme would need to be updated too) and skip all of
Plan 9's glory.
On Jan 24, 2008, at 1:52 PM, erik quanstrom wrote:
Unfortunately, we're about 20 years too late. People have Microsoft
Word and they don't need an operating system with useful features,
automated backup at no additional cost, and a wealth of
documentation. I doubt I'll purchase Office:mac 2008 for my iMac, as
I use troff now. If you disagree, raise your virtual hands.
it's quite a stretch to go from acme being able to handle layouts
to microsoft word. the oberon system had something like layouts,
but layouts were part of the text module. thus there was no such
thing as plain text. the next station had display postscript. but
that's a quite complicated model. i think text should be text and
images should be images.
but you just can't do graphics or html layout with just text.
you need something to glue (sorry) things together. it's
fairly annoying that proof text is not selectable and doesn't
work inside acme.
i realize there are holes around the edges. i don't see how to
edit or select a layout, just the text within layouts. maybe
select skips non-text bits.
what's so wrong about this idea?
- erik
