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Comment by m0nastic | Hacker News Reader

I know this isn't a tech support forum, but in a fit of lunacy I figured I'd give Acme a try last night (the Acme-SAC version) and after using it for an hour of so I can't even figure out how to open a text file (it seems like it has its own virtual directory structure that I can't seem to navigate out of).

Anybody here successfully using Acme for coding?

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I think some of your confusion may be a result of using acme-SAC. I recall acme-SAC is built on top of Inferno, which is actually a small semivirtualized operating system. I think the host filesystem is accessible via the #U* kernel device, which means you would first issue a bind command to put #U* somewhere in your namespace. Also, if you are using gnu/linux or bsd, you could try plan9port's version of acme.

I use the plan9 from userspace[1] version a lot on both Linux and OS X, almost exclusively actually. Read the man page[2] or even the paper[3]. I recommend giving it some time to get used to, it pays off.

Acme-SAC is built on top of Inferno; the virtual directory structure you're seeing is Inferno's namespace. I find it helps if you know a bit about that first.

[1] http://swtch.com/plan9port/

[2] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html?man=acme&sect=...

[3] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme/acme.html

The obvious answer is to right-click on a file to open it.

If you mean open a file externally then I suggest you run acme from plan9port, then just run 'plumber' and use the program 'plumb' to send open commands to acme. It is fairly flexible:

    $ plumb /path/to/file
    $ plumb /path/to/file:35
    $ plumb /path/to/file:/NameError

The nice thing is if the file is already open, acme will jump to the right place and highlight what you want.

For Acme, remember that it's an editor on a shell, with Unix DNA. Also remember that Acme-SAC is based on Inferno.

But, being nix-ish, if you want to know something, just man whatever. To start, type 'man intro' someplace. Then shift-click-sweep the cursor over the text to highlight, and alt-click the highlighted text (plumb).

Notice in the article how rsc mentions the three mouse buttons more than once? The missing buttons on the Mac are a big reason Acme SAC doesn't fly for me, no matter how much I'd like it to.

I think it would be really great on a Mac, but would need some tweaking to get there.

1) There still are real 3-button mice for sale: HP DY651A goes for $12. It's a very nice USB optical mouse with 3 buttons and no scroll wheel. Perfect for Acme. If you insist on using a flawed one button apple mouse, you only have yourself to blame.

2) If you're on a Mac, you can run the plan9port version of Acme, no need for Acme-SAC.

I'm on a laptop, and just don't bother with a mouse. Some of the tweaking I mentioned would be to deemphasize the mouse and focus on the usual trackpad 2,3,4 finger actions instead. Just for Acme SAC though.

windows acme-sac is my day to day programming environment. the host file system is available at /n/C and /n/D (/n/local on linux and os x).

Thank you, that works. I felt like an idiot for not being able to figure out how to actually navigate to my filesystem.

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