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From: Paul Lalonde <plalonde@tel...>
Subject: gcc on plan9
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 21:11:29 -0700

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On 7-Jun-06, at 8:51 PM, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
> What if you had a window manager that could be recursive? that  
> would set it up so you can name windows by a path name? that would  
> let you treat the recursive desktops -- to any level -- as just  
> another window? that would trivially allow you to connect mouse  
> clicks in a window to control actions for one or more other windows  
> (i.e. you could logically group windows and then control all of  
> them via mouse clicks)? That would maybe let you easily connect  
> output from a process in one window to another? that would let you  
> build little widgets that  could easily control other windows? That  
> would let you display all window state in another window? That  
> would let you set, say, all windows with a browser with the label  
> abaco-### (### a number), with a simple text command; and let you  
> find all windows with the label abaco.* with, in the limit, a grep?  
> That would make it easy to group all windows with the label  
> 'abaco.*' so that you could say 'hide all abaco' with a simple script?
>
> Wouldn't that be neat? I mean, that's a real bitch in X, right?
>
> Except ... you already have it.

And this is what makes me such a fan of the Plan 9 model.

Now if people wanted to do something "end-user-ish" perhaps they  
could produce those little handy tools, and hook them up to some  
simple window decorations (but that still somehow work the natural  
way they do now - perhaps a "decorated" mirror file server).

But the effort is doomed to failure - end-user-pleasers want more eye  
candy than can be coordinated without a good professional designer  
riding whip on the project.

I'm a big fan of the extreme wire-it-together we get from unixish  
tools + plan 9 file servers, but it's an environment for experts, not  
end-users.

Paul

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