[TUHS] cat -v and other complaints

[Andy Kosela]

ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 1:02 PM Andy Kosela <akosela at andykosela.com> wrote:
>
> > One still cannot ignore the fact that Unix and Plan 9 offer two
> > completely different approaches to displaying text.  I think it also
> > would not be very productive nor it was intended to use Plan 9 without
> > mouse and rio(1).
> >
>
> I spent four years using Plan 9 on the Blue Gene supercomputer (I led the
> team that did the port). I also spent years using it on embedded systems
> with no windowing system at all.
>
> What you're saying does not accord with anything I experienced with Plan 9
> over a dozen year span. I also don't believe your claims are driven by
> experience using Plan 9; am I missing something? What is the basis of your
> statement?

Just from personal experience running Plan 9.  Well, you can't tell me
this system was designed with the idea of running it using text terminal
and no mouse.  There is also no cursor addressing, no curses.  Like I
written before it was born in the different era -- they tried to not
build it on the idea of character based TTY, but rather incorporate
graphical element into it.

If it is possible to be fully productive in Plan 9 using just VGA text
mode (720x400) and not any of the bitmap modes, with Unix like cursor
addressing and with no rio(1) and no mouse then it's something I never
really explored.

--Andy