Shamar @Shamar@social.cleverlibre.org

@ekaitz_zarraga

Through a simple file system protocol, #9P2000 that you can use to create/export/mount/bind file systems and a consistent design where every service is controlled through a uniform API (a file system).

You can represent anything with a file system and once it's a fs you can both share access to it or mount it wherever you want.

Devsegment for example let you allocate a memory segment that can be also accessed (and thus exported) as a file.

This is a great question @ekaitz_zarraga

Think about pipes.

They let you compose independent programs so that you can build complex transformations of a data stream.
The power of pipes comes from the simple and uniform interface they use: file descriptors.
But on Unix file descriptors are not that simple (see ioctl if you are brave).

Plan 9 let you do the same with file systems: you can stack a file server on top of another. This means that while in Unix you are constrained to connect programs through a data stream, in Plan 9 you can compose local services and remote ones transparently. And your local programs can access the whole stack in an uniform way.

Let me give you an example of why this could replace the shitty architecture of the Web.

Suppose you want to use a remote Meteo service.

Now you basically open the browser, visit a Web page, execute any js they want you to execute and send them your GPS position.

With Plan 9 you could export to the Meteo service a file server that let them draw on your screen and read your GPS position.

What's the advantage?

Well you compose the fs you are going to export! You can decide your GPS position by writing a file. And you can lie!

Or you can replace your screen with a fs that write on a PNG.

Or you might add an overlay fs that transparently log any request before executing it on the underlying fs.

And this is just a trivial example.

Today we use a primitive architecture to build distributed applications and you can easily see how hard is to mesh even just contents between different websites. And we let strangers execute whatever they want on our machines just because we can't think of anything better.

Plan 9 let you think better distributed architectures.

That's why I think one day a #Plan9 system will free us from this mess.

@xj9

You don't need a special tool, you want one. Both using spaces in file names and not using them have trade offs.

Without you have easier textual interactions.
With you have easier to write nice graphical file managers.

Depending on what you care more about you move between the two.

@grainloom

@xj9 @grainloom

Basically it's a matter of habits.

You are used to operating systems that care much more about looking simple that about being simple.

But sometimes few consistent constraints can make a system more predictable and easy to compose.

@xj9

That's an UI issue in the software you use to organise your music.
Use an higher level UI if you don't want to mess with such low level details.

@grainloom

@grainloom

String literals mean escape rules.

And sometimes they are hard to get right for programmers too.

Every single time programmers are too shy to impose a simple restriction to users' input (or customers' will), they add to the pile of crap another source of complexity.

@xj9

@grainloom

Actually if you completely remove text from computers, you won't have such problems with spaces.

As an alternative one might consider to replace the space with a different character in the input of textual interfaces (aka shells).

@xj9

@xj9

Maybe you will.

Because you might discover that such design decision makes scripting (and programming in general) easier and faster, for example.

What makes you more free, spaces in filenames or easier programming?

@grainloom

@grainloom

Because of C's design.

It's not a limitation, but an explicit choice. There were alternatives, but they were explicitly discarded.

@xj9

@xj9

Nice example. 😉

Use underscore.
If you like to SEE space instead of underscore into you file manager GUI configure your file manager GUI that way.

But since files are acted upon through commands in a textual interface that use spaces, spaces should not be allowed.

@grainloom

@xj9

I can.

Every programmer continuously does that to users: we restrict what you can do with computers so that you can actually do something.

For example you can't put a 0x0 byte in the middle of a file name. Or a "/" in a domain name.

You are so used to our power you can't see it anymore. And actually most programmers are unaware of it.

But the truth is that we CAN tell you what to do and what not. And that's nothing!

Software programmers dictate how people THINK!

And this was true way before Cambridge Analytica: you perceive and act on the world through the software we write.

Through software we shape your synapses.

@grainloom

@grainloom

To be honest I don't know why one could need spaces in file names.

I should probably forbid them in #Jehanne at kernel level