8½ (Plan 9)
Encyclopedia
8½ is a window system
developed for the Plan 9 from Bell Labs
operating system
by Rob Pike. According to its documentation, the system has little graphical fanciness, a fixed user interface, and depends on a three-button mouse. Like much of the Plan 9 operating system, many operations work by reading and writing to special files.
Because of the limitations stemming from its unusual implementation, 8½ has been completely rewritten
into its successor rio
in recent Plan 9 versions.
Windowing system
A windowing system is a component of a graphical user interface , and more specifically of a desktop environment, which supports the implementation of window managers, and provides basic support for graphics hardware, pointing devices such as mice, and keyboards...
developed for the Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system. It was developed primarily for research purposes as the successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
by Rob Pike. According to its documentation, the system has little graphical fanciness, a fixed user interface, and depends on a three-button mouse. Like much of the Plan 9 operating system, many operations work by reading and writing to special files.
Because of the limitations stemming from its unusual implementation, 8½ has been completely rewritten
Rewrite (programming)
A rewrite in computer programming is the act or result of re-implementing a large portion of existing functionality without re-use of its source code. When the rewrite is not using existing code at all, it is common to speak of a rewrite from scratch...
into its successor rio
Rio (program)
rio is Plan 9 from Bell Labs's windowing system. It is most notably known for making its window management transparent to the application. This allows running rio inside of another window manager.-Design concepts:...
in recent Plan 9 versions.
See also
- Plan 9 from Bell LabsPlan 9 from Bell LabsPlan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system. It was developed primarily for research purposes as the successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002...
— the operating system - rioRio (program)rio is Plan 9 from Bell Labs's windowing system. It is most notably known for making its window management transparent to the application. This allows running rio inside of another window manager.-Design concepts:...
— the new Plan 9 windowing system
External links
- 8½, the Plan 9 Window System by Rob Pike — The original paper.