13 Aug
2010
13 Aug
'10
10:22 a.m.
I figured some people on this list would want to play with this.
From the gopher-project mailing list.
----- Forwarded message from N. Theodore Matavka -----
From: "N. Theodore Matavka" <... at gmail.com>
To: gopher-project at lists.alioth.debian.org
Subject: [gopher] OT: Anyone interested in text editor programming?
Hello, world!
I know this is a Gopher mailing list, but I know that there are some
budding developers among you. Recently, I have rescued some software
from the bit bucket, and I am asking, if it is not too
much, if there
are any among you interested in bringing a great old editor back to
the forefront.
I am talking about TECO: the famously cryptic Text Editor and
Corrector, now made far less cryptic due to the addition of a GUI. If
you have ever done any amount of work on HP or DEC minis, you must
know what I'm talking about. If not, here's a quick rundown:
TECO was the first-ever programmer's editor to be written, in the
tradition of vi and emacs. In fact, emacs is a direct descendant of
TECO, having originally been called Editor Macros. It is included as
system standard on all manner of VAXen and PDP-10s. Its one main
drawback was that the buffer of text that was being worked on was not
visible except on-demand, and one could completely mangle a document
with just a few keystrokes, until someone managed to write a version
of TECO that displayed the text buffer all the time.
Video TECO is an attempt to re-create this great old editor in a
version that any Tom, Dick, or Harry would understand. It was written
by Paul Cantrell ten years ago; the files had been lost, until I
discovered a snapshot of the source hiding in my e-mail inbox. I've
even found a patch to make it run on Linux. So I've re-released it
under the Sleepycat Licence, and I am currently enlisting developers
to help me add new features and squash bugs.
I've got plenty of documentation from DEC and HP as to how to work
this editor; I've been using it for quite a while in its old version,
and would surely appreciate video TECO. A version of video TECO
already exists on VAX, and it is only by luck that I managed to find
this version for PC.
I have just put the files on SourceForge, and they are available at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/newteco/. Please assist me in this
great endeavour.
Cordially,
Nick Matavka.
_______________________________________________
Gopher-Project mailing list
Gopher-Project at lists.alioth.debian.org
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/gopher-project
----- End of forwarded message from N. Theodore Matavka -----
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- There are 10 kinds of people: those who read binary, and those who don't. --
13 Aug
13 Aug
11:23 a.m.
On Fri, 13 Aug 2010, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
e Video TECO is an attempt to re-create this great old editor in a
version that any Tom, Dick, or Harry would understand.
It was written
by Paul Cantrell ten years ago; the files had been lost, until I
discovered a snapshot of the source hiding in my e-mail inbox. I've
even found a patch to make it run on Linux. So I've re-released it
under the Sleepycat Licence, and I am currently enlisting developers
to help me add new features and squash bugs.
Hmm. I have a copy of it sitting here on my NetBSD box. Here's a snippet
of the RELEASE_NOTES file:
----------------------------
revision 4.69
date: 1994/09/20 09:24:12; author: paul; state: Exp; lines: +26 -5
Added some different handling for magic cookie terminals for
Sander van Malssen, as well as fixing an array length bug found
by Mark Henderson. Also, added definitions for LINUX and SOLARIS.
----------------------------
I don't have a linux box, so I haven't tried building it for linux.
Building it for bsd gives me a few warnings, but it seems to work.
Didn't know anyone was looking for it. When I went looking for it a few
years ago, I had to reach really far back in my personal archives of old
CDs to find a copy.
--
roger ivie
rivie at ridgenet.net
14 Aug
14 Aug
8:42 p.m.
Video TECO is an attempt to re-create this great old
editor in a
version that any Tom, Dick, or Harry would understand. It was written
by Paul Cantrell ten years ago; the files had been lost, until I
discovered a snapshot of the source hiding in my e-mail inbox. I've
even found a patch to make it run on Linux. So I've re-released it
under the Sleepycat Licence, and I am currently enlisting developers
to help me add new features and squash bugs.
Who is this fellow, and what makes him think that TECO, visual or otherwise,
has ever been lost????
*I* haven't lost it, and I am the maintainer of MIT TECO and EMACS, and have
been since I posted a Y2K fix to comp.emacs and gnu.emacs.bugs (or whatever
the newsgroup was called at the time). RMS stated that he had no idea that
anyone was maintaining it, and that if I wanted to take it on, I should go
for it. As I was working for a company that built PDP-10 clone systems at
the time, I did so quite happily.
Video TECO has never been lost. It was written by PDP-10 engineers at DEC
in the 1970s, and it still present on the Tops-10 distribution tapes (as
images at http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/).
10 years ago is not all that long in the history of TECO, and I have no
idea who Mr. Cantrell might be, but I misdoubt he would have a great deal
to say about the expropriation of his work by this fellow without, as far
as I can tell, so much as a "By your leave".
$DEITY, I hate children who think that because something is unknown to them
it must be unknown to all the world!
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
15 Aug
15 Aug
2:34 a.m.
$DEITY, I hate children who think that because
something is unknown to them
it must be unknown to all the world!
Rich, I can tell you feel strongly, but I had never heard of Video TECO
either, so is republishing it and bringing it up to date not a good thing?
I'm sort of regretting posting Nick's announcement here, given the response
has been generally negative.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- When two elephants fight, the grass and trees suffer. -- African proverb ---
16 Aug
16 Aug
2:18 p.m.
From: Cameron Kaiser
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 11:35 PM
> $DEITY, I hate children who think that because
something is unknown to them
> it must be unknown to all the world!
Rich, I can tell you feel strongly, but I had never
heard of Video TECO
either, so is republishing it and bringing it up to date not a good thing?
I'm sort of regretting posting Nick's
announcement here, given the response
has been generally negative.
Cameron, there is a Usenet newsgroup called alt.lang.teco, as well as those
devoted to various DEC architectures and those devoted to Emacs in all its
variants, and even alt.folklore.computers (to the extent that it hasn't been
ruined). Nick does not appear to have asked in any of these fora about the
existence of video-friendly TECO implementations.
Further, the code he is publishing *AND PUTTING UNDER LICENSE* belongs to
someone else, someone with whom he states he has not been able to contact.
That is so far from OK that I am surprised that I'm the only one who has
had anything to say about it (in public?).
I thought about going off and registering on the DebIan list in question,
but I hate to drop in on a list just to scold someone who presumably ought
to know better. If you want to forward my comments, feel free to do so,
as long as you scrub the e-mail address (work) and substitute my Linux
mailing lists address "linux at alderson.users.panix.com" (personal) before
doing so.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
2:42 p.m.
Rich, I can
tell you feel strongly, but I had never heard of Video TECO
either, so is republishing it and bringing it up to date not a good thing?
I'm sort of regretting posting Nick's announcement here, given the response
has been generally negative.
Cameron, there is a Usenet newsgroup called alt.lang.teco, as well as those
devoted to various DEC architectures and those devoted to Emacs in all its
variants, and even alt.folklore.computers (to the extent that it hasn't been
ruined). Nick does not appear to have asked in any of these fora about the
existence of video-friendly TECO implementations. Further, the code he is publishing *AND PUTTING UNDER
LICENSE* belongs to
someone else, someone with whom he states he has not been able to contact.
That is so far from OK that I am surprised that I'm the only one who has
had anything to say about it (in public?).
That's a valid point, I didn't notice that myself. I'll mention that to him.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Michael Jackson is [reverse] Pinocchio: more lies, less nose. -- Vanity Fair
3:33 p.m.
Further, the
code he is publishing *AND PUTTING UNDER LICENSE* belongs to
someone else, someone with whom he states he has not been able to contact.
That is so far from OK that I am surprised that I'm the only one who has
had anything to say about it (in public?).
That's a valid point, I didn't notice that myself. I'll mention that
to him. 
17 Aug
17 Aug
1:03 a.m.
Further,
the code he is publishing *AND PUTTING UNDER LICENSE* belongs to
someone else, someone with whom he states he has not been able to contact.
That is so far from OK that I am surprised that I'm the only one who has
had anything to say about it (in public?).
That's a valid point, I didn't notice that myself. I'll
mention that
to him.
16 Aug
16 Aug
8:34 p.m.
On 8/16/2010 1:42 PM, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I think he should at least perform a cursory online search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Video+TECO provides a link the
Sourceforge web site for the files
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/videoteco/files/) off of one of the
first few links. Now, it appears the same source is hosted twice on
SF.net.
I think this is a larger point. Merely rehosting the files is
potentially wasteful, but no worse (all things considered) than
mirroring files. The act of re-releasing it under a new license (I'm
assuming Paul did not originally release under the SleepyCat license)
carries some legal implications if the "currently enlist[ed] developers"
modify code thinking they are working under one license, and then later
find out the code was not licensed under that license.
I can understand your point, though. I doubt Nick meant to run afoul of
so many specifics by doing this. He's no doubt just excited he found an
important part of history. Still, I think he needs to understand the
issues and the realities of open source licensing. Maybe you can
lightly relate the issues and help him address the potential hosting
duplication and the licensing issues.
Jim
--
Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X)
brain at jbrain.com
Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!
Home: http://www.jbrain.com
ruined). Nick does not appear to have asked in any of these fora about the
existence of video-friendly TECO implementations.
But must he? I'm sure there are billions of Commodore-related outlets
that
I don't know about.
Further, the
code he is publishing *AND PUTTING UNDER LICENSE* belongs to
someone else, someone with whom he states he has not been able to contact.
That is so far from OK that I am surprised that I'm the only one who has
had anything to say about it (in public?).
That's a valid point, I didn't notice that myself. I'll mention
that to him.
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days inactive
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