Intro to tools philosophy for windows users D1079574269 Anpe (66.26.59.232) #Coming from the windows world people tend to get used to big #programs that do everything, using word or excel makes you feel like #your program should do everything, a word processor should format, #spell check and print your files; a spreadsheet should do all the #sorting, mathematical functions and graphing. # #Plan 9 and its Unix ancestors don't work like this. Programs in Plan #9 are meant to have one use and one use only. Plan 9 doesn't have #word processors, instead you write the text using a text #editor(liked ed(1), acme(1) or sam(1)), format it with fmt(1) and if #you want to turn it into a form that's document quality insert ms(6) #macros. # #excel requires a bit more understanding, spreadsheets are #represented as flat files, you can manipulate these files, #summations, equations etc. with a programming language called awk(1) #which specializes in manipulating structured text. Once manipulated #you can graph data with a graphing program called graph(1) #manipulation on fields isneed to use graph(1) if you want to write #to the screen or grap(1) if you want to make troff graphs to include #in your documents. # #But if you were just limited to mimicing the functionality of #windows Plan 9 would only be a cumbersome equivalent. The real joy #of Plan 9 is the ability of each of these programs to interact with #each other, since everything is flat text