2 Dec
2014
2 Dec
'14
6 a.m.
I was seeking the "best" pdp11 prose text editing experience for typing
in manuscripts, composing, letter writing, etc. (not programming language -
that was just a side effect of some editors actually being programming
languages in and of themselves).
Since this is such a highly relative subject, I expected a slew of
answers and got them (thanks, all!).
While not part of the originally-intended scope, the conversation has
inspired me to at least try composing in TeX, which I've sort of meant to
do for years, but never got a round tuit. Sounds like it'll stay out of my
way and allow me to just flow ideas and not even address layout until the
end, which is, in essence, what I'm after. That said, I think the most
convincing answer to my original question so far, not having actually
reviewed them yet, is some kind of emacs, most likely Jove since it's
already there in 2.xBSD and keeps me from having to mess with/re-learn
other operating systems (oh, shoot!). As a side note, I used teco and edt
back when pdp11s running DEC operating systems were still being phased out
and found them to be unsatisfying; however, I do admit that I was an
amateur at them.
My other point here was to get the Diablo 630 going and have it type
nice, letter-quality copy for me. Since my kid had a report due this
morning, I caved and temporarily connected it to an old Sun machine and
just threw lpd at it. Pretty straightforward:
lpadmin -p diablo -v /dev/cua/b -o stty=300 -o banner=never
enable diablo
accept diablo
So the thing's up and accepting jobs. Prints like a war zone :) !!!
Once one of the '11s is up, on the net and stabilized, I'd like to have it
take over this role as well.
thx again for all the discussion around this & feel welcome to continue the
thread!
jake
2 Dec
2 Dec
6:29 a.m.
Jacob, I went along a similar journey with VAX to find a terminal based
word processor. I used ALLIN1 back in the day so knew that was a
possibility - the word processing module is a successor of WPS-8 called
WPS-PLUS - this was a stand-alone application for a while before ALLIN1
came along.
Skip Walter, one of the original architects has written about it here:
http://skipwalter.net/2012/01/13/the-making-of-enterprise-software-all-in-1/
There are a couple of other articles on his site too.
I installed and used ALLIN1 for my Retrochallenge 2009 Winter Warmup entry,
there are some screen shots and information here:
http://www.wickensonline.co.uk/retro/allin1.html
What I have found is that terminal based word processing software is pretty
thin on the ground across the board. The other alternative I've played with
is WordPerfect for Unix. I have that running on a Sun Ultra 5 under Solaris
2.9 - there is both a graphical and command line executable. Others have
tried to find similar software - a word processor you can telnet to
effectively - but there isn't a great deal out there.
To bring this full circle I also connected a daisywheel printer (a JUKI
6100) to the Ultra 5 and successfully printed out articles written in
WordPerfect.
If I could find a language I was comfortable with and a PDP environment I'd
give writing a rudimentary word processor a go (think the kind of
application you might have found on a CBM-64 back in the day for example).
Finally, TeX (or probably more likely LaTeX) is a great tool that easily
gets you hooked once you've had a play. It is *extremely* powerful so you
have to put a bit of effort in for anything fancy, but for banging out
letters you're in a straight ASCII text editor - no frills (or maybe
thrills?) required. Definitely requires a page-based printer however
(inkjet/laser) - happy to be proved wrong but unless you have an
application to print pixels on your daisywheel (it has been done mind!)
you're out of luck using that as an output device from LaTex (actually that
might be a bit harsh - lots of documentation systems can convert to LaTeX
and I remember a terminal based preview application so maybe there would be
a bit of milage in there but it would mostly be a clash of technologies I
feel).
Mark.
On 2 December 2014 at 14:00, Jacob Ritorto <jacob.ritorto at gmail.com> wrote:
I was seeking the "best" pdp11 prose text
editing experience for typing
in manuscripts, composing, letter writing, etc. (not programming language -
that was just a side effect of some editors actually being programming
languages in and of themselves).
Since this is such a highly relative subject, I expected a slew of
answers and got them (thanks, all!).
While not part of the originally-intended scope, the conversation has
inspired me to at least try composing in TeX, which I've sort of meant to
do for years, but never got a round tuit. Sounds like it'll stay out of my
way and allow me to just flow ideas and not even address layout until the
end, which is, in essence, what I'm after. That said, I think the most
convincing answer to my original question so far, not having actually
reviewed them yet, is some kind of emacs, most likely Jove since it's
already there in 2.xBSD and keeps me from having to mess with/re-learn
other operating systems (oh, shoot!). As a side note, I used teco and edt
back when pdp11s running DEC operating systems were still being phased out
and found them to be unsatisfying; however, I do admit that I was an
amateur at them.
My other point here was to get the Diablo 630 going and have it type
nice, letter-quality copy for me. Since my kid had a report due this
morning, I caved and temporarily connected it to an old Sun machine and
just threw lpd at it. Pretty straightforward:
lpadmin -p diablo -v /dev/cua/b -o stty=300 -o banner=never
enable diablo
accept diablo
So the thing's up and accepting jobs. Prints like a war zone :) !!!
Once one of the '11s is up, on the net and stabilized, I'd like to have it
take over this role as well.
thx again for all the discussion around this & feel welcome to continue the
thread!
jake
6:53 a.m.
Yes, Mark, it was a poor old ultra5 that I used for the Diablo last night
as well, but running snv_65! That hardware, while pretty cheap and rafty,
does have a mysterious tendency to last a long time.
I had thought TeX was line printer friendly at some point and only later
evolved to support matrix-type devices?
I had purchased Wordperfect for Linux some decades ago. It was quite
brittle, but mostly worked. Didn't try the cli version, just gui, which is
regrettable. iirc it was ported via java, so maybe my old copy would work
on other unixes (or whatever random java hosts) as well?
On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 9:29 AM, Mark Wickens <mark at wickensonline.co.uk>
wrote:
Jacob, I went along a similar journey with VAX to find
a terminal based
word processor. I used ALLIN1 back in the day so knew that was a
possibility - the word processing module is a successor of WPS-8 called
WPS-PLUS - this was a stand-alone application for a while before ALLIN1
came along.
Skip Walter, one of the original architects has written about it here:
http://skipwalter.net/2012/01/13/the-making-of-enterprise-software-all-in-1/
There are a couple of other articles on his site too.
I installed and used ALLIN1 for my Retrochallenge 2009 Winter Warmup entry,
there are some screen shots and information here:
http://www.wickensonline.co.uk/retro/allin1.html
What I have found is that terminal based word processing software is pretty
thin on the ground across the board. The other alternative I've played with
is WordPerfect for Unix. I have that running on a Sun Ultra 5 under Solaris
2.9 - there is both a graphical and command line executable. Others have
tried to find similar software - a word processor you can telnet to
effectively - but there isn't a great deal out there.
To bring this full circle I also connected a daisywheel printer (a JUKI
6100) to the Ultra 5 and successfully printed out articles written in
WordPerfect.
If I could find a language I was comfortable with and a PDP environment I'd
give writing a rudimentary word processor a go (think the kind of
application you might have found on a CBM-64 back in the day for example).
Finally, TeX (or probably more likely LaTeX) is a great tool that easily
gets you hooked once you've had a play. It is *extremely* powerful so you
have to put a bit of effort in for anything fancy, but for banging out
letters you're in a straight ASCII text editor - no frills (or maybe
thrills?) required. Definitely requires a page-based printer however
(inkjet/laser) - happy to be proved wrong but unless you have an
application to print pixels on your daisywheel (it has been done mind!)
you're out of luck using that as an output device from LaTex (actually that
might be a bit harsh - lots of documentation systems can convert to LaTeX
and I remember a terminal based preview application so maybe there would be
a bit of milage in there but it would mostly be a clash of technologies I
feel).
Mark.
On 2 December 2014 at 14:00, Jacob Ritorto <jacob.ritorto at gmail.com>
wrote:
I was seeking the "best" pdp11 prose
text editing experience for typing
in manuscripts, composing, letter writing, etc. (not programming
language -
that was just a side effect of some editors
actually being programming
languages in and of themselves).
Since this is such a highly relative subject, I expected a slew of
answers and got them (thanks, all!).
While not part of the originally-intended scope, the conversation has
inspired me to at least try composing in TeX, which I've sort of meant to
do for years, but never got a round tuit. Sounds like it'll stay out of
my
way and allow me to just flow ideas and not even
address layout until the
end, which is, in essence, what I'm after. That said, I think the most
convincing answer to my original question so far, not having actually
reviewed them yet, is some kind of emacs, most likely Jove since it's
already there in 2.xBSD and keeps me from having to mess with/re-learn
other operating systems (oh, shoot!). As a side note, I used teco and
edt
back when pdp11s running DEC operating systems
were still being phased
out
and found them to be unsatisfying; however, I do
admit that I was an
amateur at them.
My other point here was to get the Diablo 630 going and have it type
nice, letter-quality copy for me. Since my kid had a report due this
morning, I caved and temporarily connected it to an old Sun machine and
just threw lpd at it. Pretty straightforward:
lpadmin -p diablo -v /dev/cua/b -o stty=300 -o banner=never
enable diablo
accept diablo
So the thing's up and accepting jobs. Prints like a war zone :) !!!
Once one of the '11s is up, on the net and stabilized, I'd like to have
it
take over this role as well.
thx again for all the discussion around this & feel welcome to continue
the
thread!
jake
6:56 a.m.
New subject: TeX - was Re: Summary: is there any word processing software for the pdp11?
On 02/12/14 9:53 AM, Jacob Ritorto wrote:
Yes, Mark, it was a poor old ultra5 that I used for
the Diablo last night
as well, but running snv_65! That hardware, while pretty cheap and rafty,
does have a mysterious tendency to last a long time.
I had thought TeX was line printer friendly at some point and only later
evolved to support matrix-type devices?
No, it was designed for typesetters and bitmap printers, although people
probably did hack dvi->ASCII previewers. You could still sorta read
proofs that way...
I had purchased Wordperfect for Linux some decades ago. It was quite
brittle, but mostly worked. Didn't try the cli version, just gui, which is
regrettable. iirc it was ported via java, so maybe my old copy would work
on other unixes (or whatever random java hosts) as well?
--Toby
On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 9:29 AM, Mark Wickens <mark
at wickensonline.co.uk>
wrote:
> Jacob, I went along a similar journey with VAX to find a terminal based
> word processor. ...
2:04 p.m.
From: Jacob Ritorto
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2014 6:53 AM
I had thought TeX was line printer friendly at some
point and only later
evolved to support matrix-type devices?
TeX was originally developed to produce output on a digital typesetting
system (whose name is escaping me right now) which produced output at
more than 4500 dots/inch. Everything else is a development from that.
Rich
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
7:36 a.m.
On 2 December 2014 at 14:00, Jacob Ritorto
<jacob.ritorto at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I was seeking the "best" pdp11 prose text editing experience for
> typing in manuscripts, composing, letter writing, etc. (not
> programming language - that was just a side effect of some editors
> actually being programming languages in and of themselves).
>
> Since this is such a highly relative subject, I expected a slew of
> answers and got them (thanks, all!).
>
> While not part of the originally-intended scope, the conversation
> has inspired me to at least try composing in TeX, which I've sort of
> meant to do for years, but never got a round tuit. Sounds like it'll
> stay out of my way and allow me to just flow ideas and not even
> address layout until the end, which is, in essence, what I'm after.
> That said, I think the most convincing answer to my original question
> so far, not having actually reviewed them yet, is some kind of emacs,
> most likely Jove since it's already there in 2.xBSD and keeps me from
> having to mess with/re-learn other operating systems (oh, shoot!). As
> a side note, I used teco and edt back when pdp11s running DEC
> operating systems were still being phased out and found them to be
> unsatisfying; however, I do admit that I was an amateur at them.
>
> My other point here was to get the Diablo 630 going and have it type
> nice, letter-quality copy for me. Since my kid had a report due this
> morning, I caved and temporarily connected it to an old Sun machine
> and just threw lpd at it. Pretty straightforward:
>
> lpadmin -p diablo -v /dev/cua/b -o stty=300 -o banner=never enable
> diablo accept diablo
>
> So the thing's up and accepting jobs. Prints like a war zone :) !!!
>
> Once one of the '11s is up, on the net and stabilized, I'd like to
> have it take over this role as well.
[Gary L. Messick]
Did Mass-11 run on PDP's?
My first job out of school was to support a mixed VAX/PC shop. I remember implementing a
bridge between DECNet and Netware that also converted VAX Mass-11 documents to DOS
WordPerfect.
Ahhh, the fun times, the "Holy Wars" between the VAX and PC folks! NOT!
Gary
7:46 a.m.
On Dec 2, 2014, at 6:29 AM, Mark Wickens <mark at wickensonline.co.uk> wrote:
Jacob, I went along a similar journey with VAX to find
a terminal based
word processor. I used ALLIN1 back in the day so knew that was a
possibility - the word processing module is a successor of WPS-8 called
WPS-PLUS - this was a stand-alone application for a while before ALLIN1
came along.
I've not gotten either of these running on my VMS systems. I should have a GUI based
app running on my Alpha, but have mainly used DECdocument. DECdocument is what all the
VMS documentation was written in, and is another programming language type solution.
What I have found is that terminal based word
processing software is pretty
thin on the ground across the board. The other alternative I've played with
is WordPerfect for Unix. I have that running on a Sun Ultra 5 under Solaris
2.9 - there is both a graphical and command line executable. Others have
tried to find similar software - a word processor you can telnet to
effectively - but there isn't a great deal out there.
WordPerfect was available for VMS, but I've never seen an install kit in the wild. I
know it was available on the VAX, not sure about Alpha, and I'm pretty sure it
didn't make it to Itanium.
I'm sure there are plenty of obscure solutions on both the PDP-11 and VMS sides, the
problem is the companies that made them no longer exist, and in most cases the software
itself likely no longer exists.
Speaking of obscure solutions. I rather liked MUSE under VulcanOS on Harris
minicomputers. I used that a *LOT* in the late 80's.
Zane
9:08 a.m.
On Tue, 2 Dec 2014, Jacob Ritorto wrote:
I was seeking the "best" pdp11 prose text
editing experience for typing
in manuscripts, composing, letter writing, etc. (not programming language -
that was just a side effect of some editors actually being programming
languages in and of themselves).
...
reviewed them yet, is some kind of emacs, most likely
Jove since it's
already there in 2.xBSD and keeps me from having to mess with/re-learn
This is what we did on a pdp11 with Unix version 6 so at least this much
could be done with 2.xBSD...
In my youth we did typesetting on a pdp11/34 under Unix V6. We hired young
ladies out of high school and taught them to write "troff" code using the
"ed" line editor. The output of troff was sent to the ubiquitous CaT
typesetter but the early proofing was done by sending nroff output to a
line printer.
The pdp11/34 could cope with maybe four to six people editing files at the
same time but if somebody were going to ask troff to format a document then
she called out to the other editors because one troff process is all that
could be coped with.
I still write everything in troff but I use big fat gnu emacs rather than
ed which I have largely forgotten how to use. I have meant to port the
pre-gnu troff/nroff to VMS for decades and never now and never got around
to it.
--
Richard Loken VE6BSV, Unix System Administrator : "Anybody can be a father
Athabasca University : but you have to earn
Athabasca, Alberta Canada : the title of 'daddy'"
** richardlo at admin.athabascau.ca ** : - Lynn Johnston
3449
days inactive
3449
days old
7 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
Gary＠realtimecomp.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jacob.ritorto＠gmail.com -
mark＠wickensonline.co.uk -
RichA＠LivingComputerMuseum.org -
richardlo＠admin.athabascau.ca -
toby＠telegraphics.com.au