[TUHS] Sam and Late BTL Work (was End of an era: the last ATC (USENIX Annual Technical Conference))

[Jonathan Gray]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 06:40:10AM +0000, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
> On Thursday, July 17th, 2025 at 10:44 PM, Rob Pike <robpike at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Sam had it, acme took it (and much else) from Sam.
> > 
> > -rob
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 3:22 PM Noel Hunt <noel.hunt at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > > But that is far less useful than having two windows into the same
> > > > file where the mods to each window go to the same file. Think
> > > > looking at code that has the structs at the top of the file and you
> > > > need to wack a struck and wack the code that uses that struct.
> > > > Quite pleasant.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > You will find that this is exactly what 'Zerox' in acme does.
> 
> Sam is indeed nice but I have not quite gotten to the point of using it daily.  For my hobby projects I rarely launch an X session, opting to simply work from the framebuffer console instead.  I don't have a graphical editor of choice these days though so Sam is certainly on the docket whenever I start using a windowing environment heavily outside of web browsing again.  End of the day though I like being able to do the bulk of what I do sitting at any given computer from the console.  I have a VT100 that I've finally restored to perfect health I plan on setting up in my bedroom as a true terminal (routed through my Dataphone modems down to my office machine).
> 
> To hopefully inspire some interesting discussion, was Sam ever formally supported by AT&T as an editor in System V, either OpenLook or X environments?  Or did it never escape Plan 9 as far as AT&T's commercial UNIX offerings go?  In a more general sense I find the later genetic flow from BTL et. al. to USL intriguing since the Labs were already onto things so far ahead of what System V was in the commercial scene.
> 
> - Matt G.

"This is the ad for sam, which is going in the toolchest imminently.
...
Sam is available for several systems, including System V, 9th Edition,
4.[23]BSD and SUNOS, with terminal support for 5620s, 630s, SUNWindows
and X11."
Rob Pike in comp.unix.questions Jul 15, 1988
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.unix.questions/c/lG7x8T2EDjo/m/JhteY7eDVN8J

toolchest referring to the paid AT&T UNIX System Toolchest service.

By 1992, Sam for Unix could be downloaded with anonymous FTP.
announced by Rob Pike in comp.os.research Nov 5, 1992
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.research/c/fvfHNv_t_Dw/m/UYDRogQ1ePEJ