Fwd: is there any word processing software for the pdp11?

[Ian S. King]

I didn't know there was an Emacs for PDP-11, and I've looked.  Good news!
And running on v6?  Even better.  Yet another reason for me to fix that
RK05 on my 11/34 and get it running again.
On Dec 1, 2014 4:53 AM, "Noel Chiappa" <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:

>     >> Jacob Ritorto wrote:
>
>     >> Yeah, but troff is too hard.
>
> I'm going to pass over the obvious question ('why would anybody be doing
> word
> processing on a PDP-11 in this day and age' :-), and ask if nroff is also
> too
> hard? Since it's only intended for character devices (line printers, etc)
> it's not quite as complex as troff.a
>
> I'm not sure if Bell had anything simpler; I'll have to look at my V6 Unix
> manual set.
>
>     > From: Ian S. King
>
>     > But ... Emacs (originally EMACS, "eight megabytes and continuously
>     > swapping") .. is ever going to run on a PDP-11.
>
> If you restrict yourself to GNU Emacs, yes. But there are more
> implementations
> of EMACS in the world than that bloated monstrosity!
>
> We ran an EMACS on V6 Unix at MIT, I forget who wrote it, I think it was
> someone at BBN; it was quite a nice one. It was quite customizable (but
> that
> have only been key bindings and settings, not sure if it included code),
> and
> it had all the usual features: multiple buffers and windows, etc. (In fact,
> it was so painful to use on a VT52, with its small screen, that I migrated
> to
> a Ann Arbor Ambassador terminal, with its much large screen, as soon as it
> became available.)
>
>
> I have several sets of backup tapes from one of the V6 machines at MIT; I
> sent one off to Chuck Guzis, and he's gotten almost all the bits off of it
> (a
> few records had unrecoverable read errors, but the vast majority were OK -
> like roughly 15 read errors in around 1500 records).
>
> I hope to annouce a vast trove of stuff soon from my tapes (once I figure
> out
> how to interpret the bits - they are written by a sui generis application
> called 'saveRVD', and the _only_ documentation of how it did it is... on
> that
> tape! :-) That includes a lot of code written at MIT, as well as stuff from
> elsewhere.
>
> Coming soon, in addition to that EMACS, should be BCPL, Algol, LISP and
> some
> other languages; MACRO-11 and the DEC linker (which I guess are also
> available from UNSW tapes), but _also_ programs to convert back and forth
> from .REL to a.out format, and to .LDA format; and a whole ton of other
> applications (I have no idea what all is there - if anyone is interested, I
> can make a pass through my manuals and try and make a list).
>
>         Noel
>