I won't argue any of your points but one. You can use whatever system fonts you like on OS X. Here's some Comic Sans for you: http://swtch.com/~rsc/hackernews.png

A hint on how to achieve that would be greatly appreciated.

I tried starting Acme as follows, but no joy:

9 acme -F '/Library/Fonts/Comic Sans MS.ttf'

ADDED. After googling site:swtch.com, I tried the following two invocations, but still no joy:

9 acme −F /mnt/font/Monaco/13a/font

9 acme −F /usr/local/plan9/mnt/font/Monaco/13a/font

-- which is not so surprising as neither /mnt nor /usr/local/plan9/mnt exist.

ADDED. Actually, cannot get the -F flag to Acme to do anything. E.g., $PLAN9/font/luc/latin1CW.18.font exists, but Acme started with "acme -F $PLAN9/font/luc/latin1CW.18.font" uses the same font as Acme started with "acme".

-F changes the fixed width font. You want -f.

Thanks. Am now able to choose among the fonts supplied by the plan9port tarball.

Still would like to be able to choose a OS X system font, though.

Sorry, my original reply with the screenshot included a command line, but it got lost in the internet tubes, and when I reposted the reply I forgot the command line.

acme -f /mnt/font/ComicSansMS/16a/font is how I made the screenshot. Run fontsrv -p . to get a list of the fonts you can use.

Success! My aging eyes thank you.

A final question, Russ: are you the primary author of fontsrv?

Not sure if russ is still reading this thread, but AFAIK, yes, he, or one of the many secret rsc clones is the primary author of fontsrv.

Acme does have incremental search via the right mouse click: http://acme.cat-v.org/mouse

I had seen acme color theme files in a previous plan9port repository version but can't seem to find them today. I believe I was also able to use them. Does anyone remember or know more?

At Bell Labs, Rob switched acme and sam from black and white to color in the development version of Plan 9, called Brazil, in the late fall of 1997. I used Brazil on my laptop as my day-to-day work environment, but I was not a developer. I remember writing Rob an email saying how much I enjoyed having color but that it would be nice to have options to set the color scheme. He wrote a polite but firm response back explaining his position. He had worked with a graphic designer to choose a visually pleasing color palette. He said he believed strongly that it was important for the author of a system to get details like this right instead of defaulting on that responsibility by making every user make the choice instead. He said that if the users revolted he'd find a new set of colors, but that options wouldn't happen.

It was really a marvelous email, polite yet firm and a crystal clear explanation of his philosophy. Over the years I have from time to time spent hours trying to find a copy of that email. It is lost.

But I can say definitively, both as a matter of philosophy and because I did the lion's share of the open source release work for both systems since color went in, that there have never been color theme files in the Plan 9 distribution, nor in plan9port.

I think this approach to color selection is a wee bit patronizing, assuming that all users are the same (and gives waaaaay to much credibility/authority to graphic designers). Never mind that even if you agree with the intended choice, you'd need to make adjustments to cope with environmental factors (displays, light etc.).

Interesting but I could swear I had seen some theme files and had succesfully tested them IIRC. It was either for 9term or acme if my memory ain't confused.