It's definitely the ability to parse expressions like "<file>:<lineno>" and open files at the right position, it essentially makes it integrated with many many unix tools without actually having to write any integration code.
The ease of piping the selection through an external program is a close second.
However I do not use it.
What's funny about acme is that it's a perfect metaphor for the entire plan9: it shows you how striving for a simple, beautiful design can create new, great solutions to old problems.
But at the same time it will also kill the adoption of the product completely: acme doesn't support any keybindings (doesn't fit the desing), no syntax highlighting (not the editor's job to parse code), nothing but bitmapped fonts (implementing externally defined standards is a chore), tags file support (doesn't fit the design), incremental search (doesn't fit the design), horizontal scrolling (makes it complicated to use the same editor control for the tags too), configuring the color scheme (no), weird non-standard behaviour of up and down keys (we just like it better this way)...
Bringing any of this up to a 9fan will also be a great metaphor for the friendliness of the community.
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
-- 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".
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.
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.
The ease of piping the selection through an external program is a close second.
However I do not use it.
What's funny about acme is that it's a perfect metaphor for the entire plan9: it shows you how striving for a simple, beautiful design can create new, great solutions to old problems.
But at the same time it will also kill the adoption of the product completely: acme doesn't support any keybindings (doesn't fit the desing), no syntax highlighting (not the editor's job to parse code), nothing but bitmapped fonts (implementing externally defined standards is a chore), tags file support (doesn't fit the design), incremental search (doesn't fit the design), horizontal scrolling (makes it complicated to use the same editor control for the tags too), configuring the color scheme (no), weird non-standard behaviour of up and down keys (we just like it better this way)...
Bringing any of this up to a 9fan will also be a great metaphor for the friendliness of the community.