Perhaps timewasting chatter, but the subject is a Unix/Linux program. So there.
I've used Unix/Linux for almost 50 years now ... my first encounter was as a grad student at UC Berkeley, through a friend with "legitimate" access to the machine, and to Berkeley's ARPANET node. As a Tektronix employee, my first "home" Unix system was a Tektronix 6130 running the UTek variant of Unix, around 1985. I organized a dozen Tek engineers to order the major assemblies for that system from engineering stock. We plugged the pieces together, wangled copies of the UTek source code, and compiled our own "distro" - years before Torvalds and Linux. Keith Packard helped us find "new" kernels. Typing madly, filling the process tables with compiles on those very limited machines, then pleasant chatter until completion and reboot. Remember when some brains were faster than many computers? Then text2ps ... The Apple Laserwriter (native language Postscript) also appeared in 1985. The only Postscript drivers I knew about were proprietary ... except for Australian Steven Frede's source code for "text2ps", which he wrote at University of New South Wales, probably around 1982. Just What I Needed to interface between the UTek Unix machine and the Apple Laserwriter. Over the many years since, I've updated and recompiled that text2ps code for various flavors of Unix and Linux. Before today the last recompile was 2006. However, the old C code was not strictly typed. Today (2023 Nov 22 Weds), I tried to recompile the old code for Debian Bookworm ... too many compiler warnings. I am NOT much of a programmer, but I did manage to add enough "int" and "char" and "void" and call prototypes to the program, so now it compiles without complaint. Not bad for a brain still suffering from a 70th birthday in September. I hope C and Debian won't evolve radically much over the next 25 years. I'm not planning on a "dirt nap" until I am older than my 105yo father-in-law, but my MD wife tells me I do not have complete choice in the matter; and even less choice if I hack until 3 in the morning. Spoilsport. The Apple Laserwriter is Long Gone. Today, my main printer is a Postscript hp4100n with multiple input trays (often configured for Letter and A4), also a Brother MFC4400 color printer (also Letter and A4), both with duplexing, and swappable trays for envelopes and legal. I fear that my next MAJOR recompiles will be for CUPS The Next Generation. If CUPSng is manufacturer-driven, HP and Brother may stop writing new drivers for very old printers (with Very Large and Very Cheap Toner Cartridges). Learning how to write laser printer drivers at age 75 will be challenging. Making replacement toner cartridges with desktop additive manufacturing might be even harder. ---- Well, back to "Bringing Up Bookworm". I am moving Many old Linux (mostly CentOS) machines to Debian, and translating ancient MoinMoin websites to MediaWiki. Then, back to my main mission: Changing The World, or at least The World's Poopy Diapers. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected]
