Re: editor and word processor history

Re: editor and word processor history

[Glyn Millington]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> For the Unix world, I have read there was once an
> editor called ed that didn't showed the file being
> manipulated at all 

If you are running a unix-style system, chances are that ed is still
there. Try 'man ed'. Ex and vi are likely to be there too.

Have you seen this?

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

atb

Glyn

Re: editor and word processor history

[Haines Brown]

I was once such a Describe enthusiast that I have to drop its name. If I
recall correctly, I ran it under OS/2. It was a modified desktop
publishing application. The author abandoned it, unfortunately, without
releasing it into the public domian.

Haines Brown

Re: editor and word processor history

[Emanuel Berg]

Glyn Millington <glyn.millington@gmail.com> writes:

> If you are running a unix-style system

Ha-ha, don't insult me :)

> chances are that ed is still there. Try 'man ed'. Ex
> and vi are likely to be there too.

On 64-bit Debian Wheezy, ed is not installed by default
but it is available (for example) in the Jessie
repositories. I can't find ex or plain vi, though there
are many forks of vi (vile - "vi like Emacs", nvi - a
4.4BSD vi, etc.) aside from vim, which is there (also
in many flavours), of course.

Interestingly, I have a "vi" (by way of several links
actually /usr/bin/vim.tiny) and I don't remember
installing that.

I remember installing Emacs, which isn't installed by
default which of course it should be. (On the other
hand, installing with aptitude (or apt-get) is so easy
I don't see what it matters really.)

-- 
underground experts united:
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: editor and word processor history (was: Re: RTF for emacs)

[Emanuel Berg]

Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:

> Programs were typed in using keypunches which wrote
> to punched cards or using devices that wrote to paper
> tape.  The program was then submitted as a stack of
> cards or a tape to the sysadmins who ran the
> computer.  The computer would then "SPOOL" copying
> the paper information to magnetic tape where it could
> be accessed later.  Once that happened the user could
> do various things like edit the code, compile it and
> so on.
>
> This meant there was a delay between the user's
> information being sent and the program execution.
> Often in that time errors could be found.  In that
> case the user could run an editor from a teletype and
> fix the errors.  Doing that wouldn't necessarily
> require the teletype to print out each line of code
> being changed.  That's why in early editors there
> were commands to print out lines of code, but things
> could be done without them.
>
> This was all high technology compared to the early
> days when everything submitted on cards was compiled
> and executed without question.  In those early days
> there were no editors.  Everything depended on
> punched cards and there were special machines to deal
> with them which were a partial substitute.  (Even in
> the 1970s most small IBM computers were only sold
> with peripheral for reading and punching cards.)

I suppose this would be a lot easier to understand if
you could actually see (and touch) the machines. I have
heard that in the US (Boston and San Francisco) there
are computer museum, sometimes associated with the
companies themselves.

Perhaps I can steal some LEGO and build small models...

But as for the delay between coding and execution, that
sounds really relaxing - that way, you'd never be
tempted to do shortcuts or do trial-and-error until it
works.

Of course you can program that way today as well but
sometimes time and the volume of work just make you
type and hit RET until it works, and that's always less
satisfactory then when you understand everything 100%.

-- 
underground experts united:
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: editor and word processor history

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:
>
>> Programs were typed in using keypunches which wrote
>> to punched cards or using devices that wrote to paper
>> tape.  The program was then submitted as a stack of
>> cards or a tape to the sysadmins who ran the
>> computer.  The computer would then "SPOOL" copying
>> the paper information to magnetic tape where it could
>> be accessed later.  Once that happened the user could
>> do various things like edit the code, compile it and
>> so on.
>>
>> This meant there was a delay between the user's
>> information being sent and the program execution.
>> Often in that time errors could be found.  In that
>> case the user could run an editor from a teletype and
>> fix the errors.  Doing that wouldn't necessarily
>> require the teletype to print out each line of code
>> being changed.  That's why in early editors there
>> were commands to print out lines of code, but things
>> could be done without them.
>>
>> This was all high technology compared to the early
>> days when everything submitted on cards was compiled
>> and executed without question.  In those early days
>> there were no editors.  Everything depended on
>> punched cards and there were special machines to deal
>> with them which were a partial substitute.  (Even in
>> the 1970s most small IBM computers were only sold
>> with peripheral for reading and punching cards.)
>
> I suppose this would be a lot easier to understand if
> you could actually see (and touch) the machines. I have
> heard that in the US (Boston and San Francisco) there
> are computer museum, sometimes associated with the
> companies themselves.

You can always use simulators:

http://www.masswerk.at/google60/


Otherwise, it wouldn't be too hard to configure emacs to reproduce the
feel and constraints of software development in the 60s or 70s.

M-x caps-mode RET
M-x computer-paper RET  (https://gitorious.org/com-informatimago/emacs/source/master:pjb-computer-paper.el)


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com/
"Le mercure monte ?  C'est le moment d'acheter !"

Re: editor and word processor history

[Emanuel Berg]

"Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:

> You can always use simulators:
>
> http://www.masswerk.at/google60/
>
> Otherwise, it wouldn't be too hard to configure emacs
> to reproduce the feel and constraints of software
> development in the 60s or 70s.
>
> M-x caps-mode RET M-x computer-paper RET
> (https://gitorious.org/com-informatimago/emacs/source/master:pjb-computer-paper.el)

I'll save those links and if I ever get the people I'm
associated with right now to publish a magazine, I'll
write an article on this topic, trying that stuff out.

The attraction of the past is of course that then only
(or almost so) computer people used computers. Then
along came the masses which of course is a good thing
(well, it's complicated). What surprises me so much
though is that computer work still is so focused on
technology - then, it made sense, a necessity even, but
now? As an illustration, during my 5-6 years of
extremely focused hacking I never felt the need for a
single program that didn't already exist in I don't
know how many flavours. I had to change a lot of things
a lot, every day actually, but never an entire
program. Still, when I talk to people, it is always, we
are doing a new application, a new programming
language, a new cloud-based service... I don't
understand that. What's going on? And, even though
there were programmers in the 60s and 70s, in absolute
figures, aren't there one zillion more today? So there
is something wrong with the picture which I don't get.

Anyway, speaking of computers, the 60s, and chess, I
was sent the following interesting review of the
documentary (?) "Computer Chess":

As an inveterate computer chess aficionado for many
years dating back to Sargon II on my Apple II+ and
carried up to the present-day domination of chess
programs Houdini, Komodo and Stockfish (not joking,
non-computer chess people), I can certainly appreciate
many little details in this film [...] that might pass
unnoticed. Captured is the weird mix of collegiality,
rivalry and paranoia that has always been endemic to
the hobby, represented in this film by a collection of
marginal characters, deranged charlatans, academic
uber-geeks and scruffy pot-smoking counterculture types
in a Holiday Inn sometime in the 1979-1982
period. Especially laudatory is the film`s authenticity
with respect to the tournament scenes: you see glimpses
of awkward board positions that could only have been
produced by primitive chess programs of that era, and
the still-operational hardware of the period dug up for
these scenes is simply fabulous. Likewise we can enjoy
the preposterous grooming and clothing of the
post-disco era, captured en passant with pitiless
candor. Juxtaposed against the participants of this
computer tournament are a motley collection of
encounter group' New Agers occupying the hotel at the
same time; they serve to put the chess geeks into
perspective and produce a number of very funny
interactions. Another reviewer notes that this film is
Felliniesque: that is precisely correct, and an apt
approach to the whole idea of computer age pioneers
hauling now-archaic hardware hundreds of miles to play
in a computer chess tournament in some cheap hotel. (NH
aka 'Cato the Younger' in computer chess circles.)

-- 
underground experts united:
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573