6 ms·

One thing that bothers me about new code editors/IDEs is that their developers really don't do a good enough job researching and deriving inspiration from the e

One thing that bothers me about new code editors/IDEs is that their developers really don't do a good enough job researching and deriving inspiration from the editors that already exist. For example, I have yet to find any modern editor that draws inspiration from the brilliantly designed ideas used in Plan 9's 'sam' and 'acme' editors. For example structured regexps, 3 button mouse chording, and the 'plumb' feature thats basically a context-aware, smarter version of a unix pipe between two executables. I mean i can go on and on but another thing that i find absolutely annoying about newer editors is that they all use Webkit as the base of their apps core foundation. This makes it irritating to consider trying to make changes to the code that I believe would overall improve the editor and make it more useful. (at least as far as im concerned) I can literally make a list a mile long of things I like in other editors and wish i could see condensed into one ultimate code editor to supplant all code editors that had come before.

cpach 8y ago
It’s been years since I first heard of sam and acme. Perhaps I should try them. Is it possible to run them in MacOS/Linux/Windows? Or perhaps a virtual machine? BTW, does chording work well with mice where one of the ”three” buttons is the scrool wheel?
- vthriller 8y ago
  Clickable scroll wheel works fine, it is mapped to the same button. I can't, however, imagine left+middle chord on modern laptops, there are not that many laptops (mostly ThinkPads as far as I can tell) that have three physical mouse buttons.
  - mjl- 8y ago
    i'm (happily!) using acme on macos. works great, the option and cmd buttons act as modifiers for middle and left button (execute and search).
- pmarreck 8y ago
  https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/virtual_machines/index.html https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/virtual_machines/index.html
arethuza 8y ago
Given the amount of time that people spend using editors, you think it would be worth some kind of wide ranging academic review article summarising the history of this area. Does such a thing exist?
- ianai 8y ago
  Not academic, but vim has some serious range. I really wish more apps made an effort to be mouse free. But I also wish plan9 got more awareness. Unix pipes are so useful that it’s a shame the plan9 paradigms have largely been ignored or reinvented.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Can you recommend a place where I can read about these "plan9 paradigms"? I have an interest in it from a design perspective, but don't quite have time to read the source code.
    - ianai 8y ago
      Look up a YouTube of somebody using it and discussing its features. Basically you could mount computational resources like cpus/ram/network/etc from an external resource server. It also had a graphical equivalent to the Unix pipe between applications.
    - glangdale 8y ago
      The original paper on acme is here: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/acme/ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/acme/ Acme was different to the 'sam' editor and most other Plan 9 programs up to that point (aside from its predecessor, "help", a similar system that was replaced by acme).
  - threatofrain 8y ago
    Typing only on the keyboard can be very nice for posture, but I feel that Vim users may think slightly differently if people invented a better keyboard with a pointer device attached. Then you wouldn't be "taking your hands off the keyboard", you'd just be engaging in a different motion.
usermac 8y ago
I had no idea what you were talking about but I found the video and it reminded me of "Demo" from 1968 believe https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=plan9+acme&&view=detail&mid=D67B8E57B15E1ACA5355D67B8E57B15E1ACA5355&&FORM=VRDGAR https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=plan9+acme&&view=detail...
- codetrotter 8y ago
  Timestamp in video says 2002.
roi 8y ago
The text editor Vis (https://github.com/martanne/vis https://github.com/martanne/vis, previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15710533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15710533, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11445389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11445389) is explicitly inspired by sam's structural regular expressions.
pjmlp 8y ago
Those brilliantly designed ideas used in Plan 9's 'sam' and 'acme' editors were taken from how Mesa XDE, Mesa/Cedar and Oberon used to work across the whole OS, not just the text editor. So a proof that even that point needs better research. :) Since we are on a Lisp thread, same applies to those that just bother with Emacs, eventually SLIME, withouth ever spending one second with actual Common Lisp IDEs.
- hollerith 8y ago
  'sam' is older than Oberon :)
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    "... Mesa XDE, Mesa/Cedar..."
    - hollerith 8y ago
      OK. I was too quick to correct you and did not spend enough time searching for charitable interpretations of your words.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        More info here. "The Mesa Programming Environment" http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/XDEPaper.pdf http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/XDEPaper.pdf "The Cedar Programming Environment: A Midterm Report and Examination " http://worrydream.com/refs/Teitelman%20-%20The%20Cedar%20Programming%20Environment,%20A%20Midterm%20Report%20and%20Examination.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Teitelman%20-%20The%20Cedar%20Pro...
0x445442 8y ago
Here's a discussion on Jeff Raskin's Canon Cat https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14650365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14650365 One of its strengths was discoverability. Jeff's son Aza iterated on a number of the ideas from the Cat with Enso and Ubiquity but those efforts were not specific to an editor.
mamcx 8y ago
> the 'plumb' feature This is the first time I hear about this. What make it better? How I learn more?
- Koshkin 8y ago
  There isn't much to it. Windows, for example, implements plumbing as the ability for the user to double-click, in an Explorer window, on, say, a PDF file and have it opened automatically using the default PDF viewer; the command-line equivalent is the 'start' command.
Koshkin 8y ago
> 3 button mouse chording This has never given me an impression of a good UX.
- copperx 8y ago
  Just because it's not common?
  - jes5199 8y ago
    chords aren’t discoverable. they’re like keyboard shortcuts but worse - at least keyboard shortcuts have a letter name that could be an initialism
    - anoncake 8y ago
      Not everything has to be designed purely for discoverability.
    - munificent 8y ago
      That's true, but with UX, there are sometimes trade-offs to make around discoverability and productivity. A more discoverable UI may take a greater number of steps to perform. If the application is used rarely or briefly, that's a good trade-off. But if an application will be heavily used by a user who is incentivized to learn the tool, then their total productivity matters more since it amortizes over the lifetime of their use with the tool. Text editors definitely fall into the "heavily used" bucket, so a good user experience might mean "you gotta read the manual, but once you do you can go 10x faster".
    - accoil 8y ago
      Acme cords are very simple: http://acme.cat-v.org/mouse http://acme.cat-v.org/mouse They're basic verbs you use to interact with text; not a full command. E.g instead of executing "format document" from a menu, you select the document with the left mouse button, and then middle click on the word "format". This executes the "format" command on the selected text. Somewhat like running gg=G in vim.

cpach 8y ago

It’s been years since I first heard of sam and acme. Perhaps I should try them. Is it possible to run them in MacOS/Linux/Windows? Or perhaps a virtual machine? BTW, does chording work well with mice where one of the ”three” buttons is the scrool wheel?

vthriller 8y ago
Clickable scroll wheel works fine, it is mapped to the same button. I can't, however, imagine left+middle chord on modern laptops, there are not that many laptops (mostly ThinkPads as far as I can tell) that have three physical mouse buttons.
- mjl- 8y ago
  i'm (happily!) using acme on macos. works great, the option and cmd buttons act as modifiers for middle and left button (execute and search).
pmarreck 8y ago
https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/virtual_machines/index.html https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/virtual_machines/index.html

arethuza 8y ago

Given the amount of time that people spend using editors, you think it would be worth some kind of wide ranging academic review article summarising the history of this area. Does such a thing exist?

ianai 8y ago
Not academic, but vim has some serious range. I really wish more apps made an effort to be mouse free. But I also wish plan9 got more awareness. Unix pipes are so useful that it’s a shame the plan9 paradigms have largely been ignored or reinvented.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Can you recommend a place where I can read about these "plan9 paradigms"? I have an interest in it from a design perspective, but don't quite have time to read the source code.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Look up a YouTube of somebody using it and discussing its features. Basically you could mount computational resources like cpus/ram/network/etc from an external resource server. It also had a graphical equivalent to the Unix pipe between applications.
  - glangdale 8y ago
    The original paper on acme is here: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/acme/ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/acme/ Acme was different to the 'sam' editor and most other Plan 9 programs up to that point (aside from its predecessor, "help", a similar system that was replaced by acme).
- threatofrain 8y ago
  Typing only on the keyboard can be very nice for posture, but I feel that Vim users may think slightly differently if people invented a better keyboard with a pointer device attached. Then you wouldn't be "taking your hands off the keyboard", you'd just be engaging in a different motion.

usermac 8y ago

I had no idea what you were talking about but I found the video and it reminded me of "Demo" from 1968 believe https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=plan9+acme&&view=detail&mid=D67B8E57B15E1ACA5355D67B8E57B15E1ACA5355&&FORM=VRDGAR https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=plan9+acme&&view=detail...

codetrotter 8y ago
Timestamp in video says 2002.

roi 8y ago

The text editor Vis (https://github.com/martanne/vis https://github.com/martanne/vis, previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15710533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15710533, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11445389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11445389) is explicitly inspired by sam's structural regular expressions.

pjmlp 8y ago

Those brilliantly designed ideas used in Plan 9's 'sam' and 'acme' editors were taken from how Mesa XDE, Mesa/Cedar and Oberon used to work across the whole OS, not just the text editor. So a proof that even that point needs better research. :) Since we are on a Lisp thread, same applies to those that just bother with Emacs, eventually SLIME, withouth ever spending one second with actual Common Lisp IDEs.

hollerith 8y ago
'sam' is older than Oberon :)
- pjmlp 8y ago
  "... Mesa XDE, Mesa/Cedar..."
  - hollerith 8y ago
    OK. I was too quick to correct you and did not spend enough time searching for charitable interpretations of your words.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      More info here. "The Mesa Programming Environment" http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/XDEPaper.pdf http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/XDEPaper.pdf "The Cedar Programming Environment: A Midterm Report and Examination " http://worrydream.com/refs/Teitelman%20-%20The%20Cedar%20Programming%20Environment,%20A%20Midterm%20Report%20and%20Examination.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Teitelman%20-%20The%20Cedar%20Pro...

0x445442 8y ago

Here's a discussion on Jeff Raskin's Canon Cat https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14650365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14650365 One of its strengths was discoverability. Jeff's son Aza iterated on a number of the ideas from the Cat with Enso and Ubiquity but those efforts were not specific to an editor.

mamcx 8y ago

> the 'plumb' feature This is the first time I hear about this. What make it better? How I learn more?

Koshkin 8y ago
There isn't much to it. Windows, for example, implements plumbing as the ability for the user to double-click, in an Explorer window, on, say, a PDF file and have it opened automatically using the default PDF viewer; the command-line equivalent is the 'start' command.

Koshkin 8y ago

> 3 button mouse chording This has never given me an impression of a good UX.

copperx 8y ago
Just because it's not common?
- jes5199 8y ago
  chords aren’t discoverable. they’re like keyboard shortcuts but worse - at least keyboard shortcuts have a letter name that could be an initialism
  - anoncake 8y ago
    Not everything has to be designed purely for discoverability.
  - munificent 8y ago
    That's true, but with UX, there are sometimes trade-offs to make around discoverability and productivity. A more discoverable UI may take a greater number of steps to perform. If the application is used rarely or briefly, that's a good trade-off. But if an application will be heavily used by a user who is incentivized to learn the tool, then their total productivity matters more since it amortizes over the lifetime of their use with the tool. Text editors definitely fall into the "heavily used" bucket, so a good user experience might mean "you gotta read the manual, but once you do you can go 10x faster".
  - accoil 8y ago
    Acme cords are very simple: http://acme.cat-v.org/mouse http://acme.cat-v.org/mouse They're basic verbs you use to interact with text; not a full command. E.g instead of executing "format document" from a menu, you select the document with the left mouse button, and then middle click on the word "format". This executes the "format" command on the selected text. Somewhat like running gg=G in vim.