> Treating image as character (with unusual width and height) means
> indefinite number of potential characters and if a machine (not human)
> does not able to differentiate between "text characters" and "image
> characters" it renders character sets unusable.

Sure, but the idea is that the actual description of the image lies in
a different layer (no, I don't have any idea how these will be linked)
and only a descriptive placeholder will appear at the relevant
coordinates (recall that I'm advocating a two-dimensional
representation to replace the current linear simplification).

But your point is certainly relevant. And I'm only tossing ideas
around, no deep theories involved.

++L

We could store the raw data in binary files and have C programs
access the data with a standard interface.

/* in libc */
enum { Achar, Aimage };

typedef struct Atom {
int type;
union {
char c;
Image *i;
};
} Atom;

void amamkechar(Atom *a, char c)
{
a->type = Achar;
a->c = c;
}

void amakeimage(Atom *a, Image *i)
{
a->type = Aimage;
a->i = i;
}

/* in libdraw */
void drawatom(Image *d, Atom *a, Point loc, Image *textcolor, Point
textcolorpt, char *font)
{
if (a->type == Atext) {
char c[2];

c[0] = a->c;
c[1] = '\0';
string(d, loc, textcolor, textcolorpt, font, c);
} else

}

However, this severely complicates the Unix/Plan 9 philosophy of
pipes, and only allows for character-at-a-time reads. We could add an
ability to read a string of characters up to EOF or an image to make
it (a tiny bit) simpler.

On Jan 25, 2008, at 6:21 AM, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:

>> Treating image as character (with unusual width and height) means
>> indefinite number of potential characters and if a machine (not
>> human)
>> does not able to differentiate between "text characters" and "image
>> characters" it renders character sets unusable.
>
> Sure, but the idea is that the actual description of the image lies in
> a different layer (no, I don't have any idea how these will be linked)
> and only a descriptive placeholder will appear at the relevant
> coordinates (recall that I'm advocating a two-dimensional
> representation to replace the current linear simplification).
>
> But your point is certainly relevant. And I'm only tossing ideas
> around, no deep theories involved.
>
> ++L
>

On Jan 25, 2008 7:55 AM, wrote:
> it really does not make any sense to write web browser from the ground
> up, if there is a workable version.

here we go again...
why use Plan 9 at all if every mainstream operating system is 'workable'?
i guess workable is not the point.

iru

>> it really does not make any sense to write web browser from the ground
>> up, if there is a workable version.

>here we go again...
>why use Plan 9 at all if every mainstream operating system is 'workable'?
>i guess workable is not the point.

i assumed he wanted to develop and run things mainly in the plan 9 environment
but would like the added distraction with occasional information of the web world,
for which firefox is adequate (and if something that big feels inadequate, that's a huge neurosis).
so he'd like to get it running under plan 9 somehow.

i use vnc to a big sacrificial linux machine, myself, except on the lenovo where i've been
too lazy to finish the wireless and drawterm from linux to my cpu server.
i get much more done on a plan9-only system.

if he were interested in doing research into new ways of accessing the web,
perhaps using some clever application of 9-inspired ideas,
then firefox would probably be a waste of time. if he just wants to browse
successfully, perhaps not. probably by the time he's finished it will be up
to Web 8.3 but that's not really our problem. i wouldn't waste time arguing about it (here).

> On Jan 25, 2008 7:55 AM, wrote:
>> it really does not make any sense to write web browser from the ground
>> up, if there is a workable version.
>
> here we go again...
> why use Plan 9 at all if every mainstream operating system is 'workable'?
> i guess workable is not the point.
>
> iru

Plan 9 is not, and should not in my opinion, be a Linux
replacment, Unix replacement, MS Windows replacement, and
so on. If you really want Plan 9 to dominate the world
and see all your friends use it every day, invent a killer
application for it. That's the only way you can shove
existing systems of their pedestals. Making Plan 9
exactly like Linux, or Windows, or son on, will not
cause people to leave the real Linux or Windows and use
Plan 9. Lack of a browser is not why only the select
few use Plan 9. It's a culture thing.

If you want Linux you know where to find it.

On Jan 25, 2008 12:35 PM, Charles Forsyth wrote:
> >> it really does not make any sense to write web browser from the ground
> >> up, if there is a workable version.
>
> i assumed he wanted to develop and run things mainly in the plan 9 environment
> but would like the added distraction with occasional information of the web world,
> for which firefox is adequate (and if something that big feels inadequate, that's a huge neurosis).
> so he'd like to get it running under plan 9 somehow.
>
> i use vnc to a big sacrificial linux machine, myself, except on the lenovo where i've been
> too lazy to finish the wireless and drawterm from linux to my cpu server.
> i get much more done on a plan9-only system.
>
> if he were interested in doing research into new ways of accessing the web,
> perhaps using some clever application of 9-inspired ideas,
> then firefox would probably be a waste of time. if he just wants to browse
> successfully, perhaps not. probably by the time he's finished it will be up
> to Web 8.3 but that's not really our problem. i wouldn't waste time arguing about it (here).
>
>

I'm not saying using whatever browser under linuxemu is a problem.
I think the problem is not having a good native browser for Plan 9.

iru

On Jan 25, 4:32 pm, brant...@coraid.com (Brantley Coile) wrote:
> > On Jan 25, 2008 7:55 AM, wrote:
> >> it really does not make any sense to write web browser from the ground
> >> up, if there is a workable version.
>
> > here we go again...
> > why use Plan 9 at all if every mainstream operating system is 'workable'?
> > i guess workable is not the point.
>
> > iru
>
> Plan 9 is not, and should not in my opinion, be a Linux
> replacment, Unix replacement, MS Windows replacement, and
> so on. If you really want Plan 9 to dominate the world
> and see all your friends use it every day, invent a killer
> application for it. That's the only way you can shove
> existing systems of their pedestals. Making Plan 9
> exactly like Linux, or Windows, or son on, will not
> cause people to leave the real Linux or Windows and use
> Plan 9. Lack of a browser is not why only the select
> few use Plan 9. It's a culture thing.
>
> If you want Linux you know where to find it.

My main point was that there should be a sort of extension to the core
system in form of, say, linuxemu driven applications and/or ported
applications whatever their origins are. The important part is to keep
the core system independent of these ports. I like the idea behind
linuxemu even more, because there is nothing to port and sometimes you
have just binary without access to the code. This is "applications on
demand" model, when you have it the time you need it, locally. You use
application, get results, write them down and go as usual, in native
Plan 9 environment. Specifically to my situation, it sounds great.

Instead of putting mainstream applications and Plan 9 system in
different boxes and use network to get certain job done, I would like
to see Plan 9 system having elegant way to run non native binaries
when needed locally without integrating them into the core system.
This approach can be pursued either by hardware emulation, like QEMU
does, or by operating system kernel emulation, like linuxemu does,
putting kernel into userspace.

I agree about culture thing, as you put it, and I believe that the
world would be a better place if every computer science student be
given thorough course on it.

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:26:56 EST Brantley Coile wrote:
> Plan 9 is not, and should not in my opinion, be a Linux
> replacment, Unix replacement, MS Windows replacement, and
> so on. If you really want Plan 9 to dominate the world
> and see all your friends use it every day, invent a killer
> application for it. That's the only way you can shove
> existing systems of their pedestals.

The zillion dollar question is what app would that be. And
even if you build a killer app for plan 9, most people would
want it ported to their favorite OS. Worse, the problem is
that the "platform" that matters to most people now is no
longer an OS (just as battles over which is the best
processor are now mostly past) -- this is why most killer
apps end up
a) being windows or OS X based,
b) being ported to multiple platforms (windows, OS X,
Linux, FreeBSD, Symbian), or
c) living entirely in a web browser, with a server
somewhere to provide/store the interesting bits.
d) bundled with a h/w gadget of some sort (iPod, SlingBox
etc.)

May be Plan9 can be used to provide a webserver backend but
even here you have to work with existing solutions as people
don't want to reinvent everything. The benefits provided by
the plan9 model are simply not enough if you have to reinvent
everything. Working python, ruby, c++, PHP would go some way
toward fixing that.

Another possibilty is to use it in a h/w gadget that everyone
would want (for example building something like the Lego NXT
computer controlled brick so that you can build simple
robotic apps in rc).

All this assuming anyone wants plan9 to be more popular but I
don't know if there is even a majority that wants that (or
wants it badly enough to want to do something about it).

May be the problem is that people are treating plan 9 as a
Van Gogh masterpiece when they should be treating as building
material :-)

> I'm not saying using whatever browser under linuxemu is a problem.
> I think the problem is not having a good native browser for Plan 9.

Which is due to the complexity of the task it needs to perform with a
high degree of accuracy. Given (a) that there aren't enough Plan 9
developers to construct a piece of software of Firefox's magnitude,
(b) that Firefox is not very likely to be ported to Plan 9 because,
again, there aren't enough developers to do it and (c) that the web is
not even remotely likely to stand still long enough to be called a
"standard", whichever aspect you wish to consider it from:

it just isn't going to happen!

Learn to live with it. Or show me how you expect it will happen.

++L

On Fri, 2008-01-25 at 09:49 -0800, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:26:56 EST Brantley Coile wrote:
> > Plan 9 is not, and should not in my opinion, be a Linux
> > replacment, Unix replacement, MS Windows replacement, and
> > so on. If you really want Plan 9 to dominate the world
> > and see all your friends use it every day, invent a killer
> > application for it. That's the only way you can shove
> > existing systems of their pedestals.
>
> The zillion dollar question is what app would that be.

My totally non-scientific observation is that talking about
"an app" in this context is quite misleading. May be it is just
me, but somehow "an application" has the connotations of a single
instance of code running on a single box. I don't think that is
interesting anymore. What could be interesting is to talk about,
what I would call for the lack of a better term, a utility function.
One such utility function could be pervasive networking. Gazing
into my crystal ball brings visions of Google finally doing to
cell phones what IBM did to personal computers and opening a floodgate
of software for that platform. Sun used to say "the network is the
computer" I still largely believe this to be true, but what is even
more important is that bringing pervasive networking to those ~3 billion
cell phones worldwide could very well be the killer "utility function"
of Plan 9. If not in terms of the code, at least in term of ideas.

My 2 rubles.

Thanks,
Roman.

On Jan 25, 2008 9:49 AM, Bakul Shah wrote:
[snip]
>
> Another possibilty is to use it in a h/w gadget that everyone
> would want (for example building something like the Lego NXT
> computer controlled brick so that you can build simple
> robotic apps in rc).
[snip]

Check out Styx-on-a-brick (http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/rcx_paper.html).

John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

>
> May be the problem is that people are treating plan 9 as a
> Van Gogh masterpiece when they should be treating as building
> material :-)

interestingly, that's the Coraid approach.

- erik

> why use Plan 9 at all if every mainstream operating system is 'workable'?
> i guess workable is not the point.

I don't get it, why does Plan 9 have to behave like Linux or Windows?
There are tractors, tracks and lamborghinis and no one expects the
first to travel at the speed of sound, the second to pull ploughs or
the last to carry furniture around.

Yet they all use the internal combustion engine and have wheels at the
four corners. Even the user interface is moderately common amongst
them.

++L

> May be the problem is that people are treating plan 9 as a
> Van Gogh masterpiece when they should be treating as building
> material :-)

I sincerely hope for your sake that you don't treat your next Van Gogh
masterpiece as building rubble. Or treat Plan 9 as some sort of Linux
surrogate. Why not use the real thing, considering how much less
wasteful it would be?

++L

On Jan 25, 2008 10:09 AM, wrote:
> > May be the problem is that people are treating plan 9 as a
> > Van Gogh masterpiece when they should be treating as building
> > material :-)
>
> I sincerely hope for your sake that you don't treat your next Van Gogh
> masterpiece as building rubble. Or treat Plan 9 as some sort of Linux
> surrogate. Why not use the real thing, considering how much less
> wasteful it would be?
>
> ++L
>

I think the point is that people talk a big talk about how great Plan
9 is, but then don't do a damn thing with it.
At least, that's how I read it.

John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

I will do so as soon as I can find out why I get ACPI errors from the
Linux kernel. Anyways, I am using Plan 9 now for building programs
that solve some problems in the wiki's TODO page. I added simple
table borders to htmlfmt and am going on to solve this problem:

GUI image manipulation program - page(1) crossed with sam(1) which
calls resample(1) and crop(1) (and other tools) would love to see
this implemented in Acme.... --[++pac

I dropped the word GUI and am working on porting Bell Labs' pico to
Plan 9.

On Jan 25, 2008, at 1:09 PM, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:

>> May be the problem is that people are treating plan 9 as a
>> Van Gogh masterpiece when they should be treating as building
>> material :-)
>
> I sincerely hope for your sake that you don't treat your next Van Gogh
> masterpiece as building rubble. Or treat Plan 9 as some sort of Linux
> surrogate. Why not use the real thing, considering how much less
> wasteful it would be?
>
> ++L
>

>> May be the problem is that people are treating plan 9 as a
>> Van Gogh masterpiece when they should be treating as building
>> material :-)
>
> interestingly, that's the Coraid approach.

Well, embedded is not what is being advocated here, so I think yours
is the answer to a different question. At least, I hope it is.

The exciting thing is that Plan 9 (unlike, say, Starry Night) can be
used in embedded appliances as well as in general purpose computing.
Just not in conventional desktop/laptop computing, but, rminnich's
qualms notwithstanding, how important is that to Plan 9's future?

Or, to ask a totally different question, which is preferable: for Plan
9 to resemble the conventional OS offerings or for the conventional OS
offerings to resemble Plan 9? I'd say you ought to pick one of those
camps and branch off your version of Plan 9 accordingly. Precisely as
Coraid have apparently done in a socially conscious manner.

++L

> I think the point is that people talk a big talk about how great Plan
> 9 is, but then don't do a damn thing with it.
> At least, that's how I read it.

Is that what you believe? And if so, who else believes this?

There are things Plan 9 does exceedingly well, better than any other
OSes in the wild, but they are special features, more or less remote
from the mainstream use of mainstream OSes. Were Plan 9 more popular,
many if not all of Plan 9's features would eventually become familiar
and users would begin to expect them of other OSes as well, but we're
talking fashion here, not intrinsic value.

In the meantime, Plan 9 users do benefit from features others feel no
need for and it's hard to communicate across that chasm. Just as hard
as it is to understand that one may have to cope and be able to cope
without a native browser.

If the "novelty" of Plan 9 doesn't get you, then Plan 9 is not for
you; you will not evangelise us users into making Plan 9 the tool you
want, specially when you continue to use as an example the very tool
you already have access to. And, to add insult to injury, we also do
provide the tools, should you feel that way inclined, for _you_ to
enhance Plan 9 in the direction you prefer, so our sympathy when you
"accuse" us of talking the big talk, is very, very limited.

Consider what you want carefully and decide whether Plan 9 fits into
your life. If it doesn't, either change it (you have the source) or
move on.

++L

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:29:55 PST "John Floren" wrote:
> On Jan 25, 2008 10:09 AM, wrote:
> > > May be the problem is that people are treating plan 9 as a
> > > Van Gogh masterpiece when they should be treating as building
> > > material :-)
> >
> > I sincerely hope for your sake that you don't treat your next Van Gogh
> > masterpiece as building rubble. Or treat Plan 9 as some sort of Linux
> > surrogate. Why not use the real thing, considering how much less
> > wasteful it would be?
>
> I think the point is that people talk a big talk about how great Plan
> 9 is, but then don't do a damn thing with it.
> At least, that's how I read it.

More or less right. Use it, abuse it, rip it apart and
reconstruct it but *build* something interesting with plan9!
I didn't mean to suggest people are not doing it; just that
I find building stuff is much more fruitful than discussions
about what should people *not* do with plan 9.

A killer app *always* fills some need for a lot of people but
a priori you can't know if your app is going to be the one so
no point in worrying much about it. You might as well build
something *you* find useful. If you want to compile plan9
with gcc, go right ahead! If you want to build a server
farm, why not? If you want to port plan9 to a cellphone,
great! If you want to make plan9 look like Linux, sure! The
more (& different) things get built the better.