2 Dec
2014
2 Dec
'14
1:57 p.m.
On 02/12/14 8:20 AM, Mark Wickens wrote:
Is there any general agreement on what the
'best' programming language is
for PDP-11 for this kind of application, if I'm getting what you're after
it's something like wordstar or WPS-PLUS? A text editor with some word
processing features. Good system integration and the ability to easily
control a terminal?
I know VAX Pascal is highly respected and can do most things - certainly
Theo De Klerk's book is very comprehensive.
I don't know *anything* about programming PDP-11's. Would be interested if
there is one language or it's a case of pick and choose like VAXen.
Many languages are available, depending on operating system. On Unix, C,
Fortran and Pascal of course. MACRO-11 was always popular. PDP-11 was
also used to develop experimental language environments like POP-2
(available on modern machines as poplog).
TeX is written in "literate Pascal"; it was developed, iirc, on PDP-10
machinery at SAIL? Pretty sure you could only compile and run it on a
fairly large PDP-11, if at all. (Note that it's not an editor, like most
of the other programs mentioned; it's a compiler.)
--Toby
Mark.
On 2 December 2014 at 03:36, Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
On 01/12/14 12:29 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
On 11/30/2014 07:45 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
Umm, I'm "pretty sure" I had TeX running on RSX-11M. It was
glacially slow, as in taking minutes per page, but it did get the
job done.
That's interesting. I wonder how it was ported - presumably via the Pascal
compiler.
I did web2C-based ports to Classic MacOS (inside MPW) and Inmos
Transputer; I'd have thought pdp-11 was quite a bit too small for TeX.
If you recall any more details, I'd be interested - I might attempt a new
PDP-11 port.
--Toby
It ran a lot better, of course, on a VAX.
Word processing doesn't get any better than TeX, I still use
it under Linux.
Jon