On 2014-Sep-01, at 4:56 PM, Sean Caron wrote: But one can define macros with names or use indistinguishable from base commands. (A command like \page211 would be an unlikely standard command in any language.) ( .. pulled up some of my own source from the 1980s .. filled with macros .. it's been awhile .. )

On 09/01/2014 04:58 PM, David Riley wrote: Yeah, just did a little lookup. Not TeX, nroff, troff, rtf or anything else I can recognize. Any more guesses? --Chuck

On Sep 1, 2014, at 11:42 PM, der Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG> wrote: Well, agreed. When I said it wasn't TeX of any sort, I meant it didn't follow the typical macro patterns of any existing TeX package (LaTeX, etc.) that I've seen. If you were perverse enough, you could make TeX work with the commands shown, but since each command is parsed as a whole word, things like \page211 would require you to define a macro for each page you wanted to use (to my knowledge, anyway; I haven't done a lot of deep, deep macro wizardry, but I'm pretty sure the commands are done as whole words). - Dave

From: der Mouse Sent: Monday, September 01, 2014 8:43 PM Copyright date on the first edition of Lamport's book is 1985, so some form of LaTeX existed in 1984, at least at DECwrl. The first version of TeX dates from 1978, and was written in SAIL for use on the SAIL computer system (at the time, a PDP-6/PDP-10 dual-processor) under WAITS, but was quickly ported to ITS at MIT by Guy Steele (who had spent the summer at SAIL). The WEB version, which produced TeX documents and Pascal source from the same input, came out in 1982, and is the basis for the original LaTeX macro package. Rich Rich Alderson Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

On 2014-Sep-01, at 5:04 PM, Paul Koning wrote: On 2014-Sep-01, at 4:58 PM, David Riley wrote: OK .. Looking at my old code I see a lot of curly braces, but I don't remember how far you could go with the macro syntax, or how much LaTeX differed from TeX.

On Tue, 2 Sep 2014, Chuck Guzis wrote: If the sample text is for use with the CDC TXTFORM software, it must be for a version later than 1.5. Annotating the original sample with "<- ..." comments we have: CHAP5 \format,16,60,66,8,60 <- diff \define,ref $&1 <- missing \title,c=- #p - <- diff \block,i8 <- missing \nojust <- same \setu1 <- missing \seth at A <- missing \setss[] <- missing \seto! <- missing \double <- missing \page211 <- missing \blank <- maybe the same \skip10 <- missing \center,b,u,=Chapter 5 at D Biomass, Production and the Fishery <- diff \skip6 <- missing 15.1 Introduction1 \setu1,notblanks <- missing, missing where - diff == different formatting code in TXTFORM 1.5 - missing == formatting code not in TXTFORM 1.5 - same == same formatting code as TXTFORM 1.5 I think that the \page211 isn't a macro, but setting the page number to 211 for the start of chapter 5. I think that the line "\format,16,60,66,8,60" may be setting - left margin - right margin - physical page length - 1st line indent - 1st line right margin but in any case, the \FORMAT code in TXTFORM 1.5 has only three parameters, and TXTFORM 1.5 has separate formatting codes for \MARGIN and \LENGTH. I agree with others that the sample is in the ROFF/NROFF/TROFF style. It's a declarative style rather than a procedural style like TeX. I can imagine what the other formatting codes might do, but haven't yet found a matching formatter that includes all of them. Considering each formatting code, I don't think that any of them are macro invocations, with the possible exception of \format,16,60,66,8,60. I think that the text - "Chapter 5 Biomass, Production and the Fishery" would be underlined with a single underline, with the spaces underlined, and posslibly on two lines (split at the 5 at D), and that the text - 15.1 Introduction1 may be mangled in the sample, with "Introduction1" where "Introduction&1" or "Introduction$&1" should be, and underlined but without the spaces underlined, and the "ref" "$&1" or "&1" used for generating a table of contents. Chuck, can you post a longer example, and tell us more about the source of the sample (the type of floppy or hard disk, the OS if that is known, et cetera)? --Ernest

On 09/02/2014 10:52 AM, Ernest G. Allen wrote: Can't really be too much later, as the file date itself is Dec 7, 1984. Probably a "custom" version of the product. There are some other subtle differences, such as A]b[ generates A-subscript b and A[b] generates A-superscript-b. But the TXTFORM spec will be good enough as a guide, methinks. I suspect that TXTFORM was most likely an internal product, as the document on bitsavers doesn't resemble a CDC Pubs-generated one. That is, there's no frontispiece with copyrights and CDC logo; there's no list of effective pages, nor revision history. I recall how *anything* for official publication went to pubs for their imprimatur--even IMS documents which were obsolete almost by the time they got back from the printer. I also suspect that a cruise through the VIM library would turn up its predecessor or successor. --Chuck