9front’s rio

rio is Plan 9’s default window manager. It’s the first graphical interface that will greet you.

Most interactions with rio will be through mouse chording. The left button is dedicated to selection, while the right and middle buttons are tied to contextual actions.

First Steps

To create a window, press right button, select “New” and draw its area with the right button. Beside the other options from the menu, you can resize or move a window by dragging its border with the left or the right button.

You will mostly work with text on Plan 9. One of the first shortcut you will need is to cut/copy and paste. Select some text with the left button. Cut it with the middle button. Paste it back or somewhere else with right click. Snarf is the Plan 9 word for copy.

Another common shortcut is cursor navigation. ctrl-a will move the cursor at the beginning of the line, and ctrl-e to the end of it. ctrl-a + left will move your cursor one line up, ctrl-e + right will move it one line down.

You can autocomplete file path with ctrl-f.

Window Management

Moving windows

You can set a window coordinates and size.

To launch acme in the top right corner of your monitor when your rio session starts, create the following script:

#!/bin/rc

window -r (941 0 1280 111) acme

You can invoke it with from your profile or from the terminal file with the following command.

% chmod +x /bin/riostarter
% rio -i riostarter

Subrio

You can launch another rio inside your current session, acting as a pseudo virtual space.

Hide and reveal your subrios with the “Hide” command from the parent rio right button menu.

Environement

Edit $home/lib/profile to your liking. Use it set variables, script rio sessions, or invoke scripts from /rc/bin (which is bound to /bin/).

Fonts

Fonts are installed in /lib/font/bit.

% lc /lib/font/bit
MAP			dejavusans/	jis/			pelm/
big5/			dejavusansbd/	lucida/			shinonome/
courier/		dejavusansbi/	lucidasans/		smiley/
dejavu/			dejavusansit/	lucm/			special/
dejavubd/		fixed/		misc/			terminus/
dejavubi/		gb/		naga10/			times/
dejavuit/		germgoth/	palatino/		vga/

To set terminus at size 12 as the default font, create the following variable.

font=/lib/font/bit/terminus/unicode.12.font

You can install third-party fonts. Plan 9 have its own font format, subf. Convert your bitmaps with this set of tools. 9front support TrueType fonts thanks to truetypefs(4).

File Interface

You can manipulate Plan 9’s windows content, image output, keyboard events, and so on, by working with their interface file.

These files will be in /dev for the current window, and in /mnt/wsys/wsys for other windows.

rio file interface cheat sheet

cons

Console

consctl

Console control

cursor

Cursor look

kbd

Keyboard events

label

Window’s name

mouse

Mouse events

screen

Screen visual output

snarf

Clipboard

text

window’s text

wctl

Window control

wdir

Window’s pwd

winid

Window’s id

window

window’s visual output

wsys

Subdirectories for rio’s windows.