Re: markup vs. word processing [ was RE: RIP Jerry Pournelle, the first author to write a novel on a computer Earl...]

[Ethan Dicks via cctalk]

On Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 3:05 PM, Rich Alderson via cctalk
 wrote:
> I didn't think of it as word processing, but I did something similar at Ohio
> State in 1974...

Hi, Rich,

Did we ever discuss when you were at OSU?  I know I've had
conversations with Herb Johnson about when he worked at OSU.  I ask
(in case we have not) because I lived on 12th Ave from 1970 through
1978, originally because my dad was a photographer for the Vet School,
then we just stayed when he got a job as a police photographer (taking
pictures of football riots 2 blocks from our house) until the Mormon
Church bought several houses in a row, including ours (we were the
last to sell), and built a small college on our block.

I attended OSU from 1984-1989, but it was practically our "park" at
the end of the block, so I wandered the halls long before then, hung
out in the Union, saw Star Wars at the theater next to the McDonalds,
etc., etc.,

-ethan

markup vs. word processing [ was RE: RIP Jerry Pournelle, the first author to write a novel on a computer Earl...]

[Rich Alderson via cctalk]

I met Jerry once, at a BYTE-sponsored conference held at McCormick Place
in Chicago.  Colorful.  I already knew his writing, of course.  He will be
missed.

Now:

From: Guy Sotomayor Jr
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2017 4:59 PM

> I think it all depends upon how you define “word processing”.  For me I
> absolutely detest things like MS Word.  Probably because I started with
> markup languages.

> The first one was one that I wrote for the IBM 1130 so I could do a high
> school research paper (1974).  It was written in Fortran (sorry long gone)
> and the “paper” was all on punch cards and printed on a 1403 printer.  I did
> it mainly because it was a pain to keep track of how to format for footnotes
> and attributions.

I didn't think of it as word processing, but I did something similar at Ohio
State in 1974.  I worked on the consulting team (= "help desk") for the College
of Administrative Science, hired because I (a) knew COBOL from my high school
adventures and (b) knew Coursewriter III from my time at the University of
Texas Computer-Assisted Instruction laboratory.  I was supposed to write an
on-line Quick (Introduction to) COBOL.

At UT, I had seen text input for the Coursewriter II system (IBM 1500) done on
punched cards, and probably for the 360/50 running Coursewriter III but I
didn't have access to that computer room.  I thought that that was a really
good way to do it, and convinced my boss to let me create a program for the
same purpose using PL/I (my favorite language at the time).  A grad student
wrote the COBOL course, and 2 other undergraduates put his text onto coding
sheets in Coursewriter III markup for our 2 professional keypunch operators to
enter.

At first I had the ladies (and they were) entering multipunch TAB and similar
characters, but then I got an idea from the single Hazeltine 1500 in our
terminal room:  A CONTROL key!  I used 2 shift characters, a cent sign for
CONTROL and a dollar sign for SHIFT, with the pair in opposite orders for
characters themselves in course text.

Overall, it saved about 6 months over the previous regime of having
undergraduates typing course material in on 2741 terminals.  I was rewarded
with a big raise, from $3.35/hr to $3.50/hr.  Not bad for a college kid in 1974.

As it happens, I had tried using Coursewriter III for word processing (though I
did not know that's what I was doing) in the fall of 1973, entering the text of
"The Goblin Market" from the pages of (IIRC) the September 1973 issue of
_Playboy_.  I was not satisfied with the result because the fixed spacing on
the 2741 did not work well to mimic the fancy printing job in the magazine.

> At CMU I used Scribe that output to the XGP (Xerox Graphics Printer driven by
> a PDP-11/45).  This was the first time I used something where there were
> selectable fonts (1976).  At IBM *everything* was done with various versions
> of SCRIPT.  At this point I can’t recall but I believe a number of the IBM
> manuals were all done in SCRIPT.

I didn't encounter SCRIPT until I was in graduate school at UChicago, working
at the Computation Center.  My first programming job there (after I was
promoted from the help desk) was to update the program from using Wylbur-format
text internally to using SuperWYLBUR when the Comp Center went to the more
capable commercial product.  I used SCRIPT to create my Advanced Dungeons &
Dragons materials for a campaign I was running.

I believe that all the IBM manuals which use the 1403 TN train were done using
SCRIPT to produce camera-ready copy, but that's from hearsay.

> I then used Interleaf (a *high* end document publishing/management system)
> and then FrameMaker (before Adobe completely screwed it up and finally killed
> it).

Used FrameMaker at Cisco.  Loved the output.  Hated the proprietary file format,
which meant that nothing I did could be reused on another computer.

> I currently use LaTex for producing anything more complicated than an email.

Although I encountered TeX at UChicago (one of my office mates came from
Stanford and knew DEK), I didn't learn and use it until I got to XKL, where the
Toad-1 manual was done using LaTeX with local mods (thus TeX was necessary).  I
did the work on updating the Tops-20 JSYS manuals there, although they were
never released while I was working for Len.

(Oh.  I just remembered.  I *did* used infotex once at Stanford, for some
 manual I wanted in hardcopy, but I can't remember what for.  Different from
 LaTex just to be different, I think.)

I still prefer markup languages to word processing systems, but I'm kind of
stuck with Word at work, for obvious reasons.  While I was still a contractor,
back in 2003, I wrote all my reports in LaTeX and created documents with
pdflatex, which I consider a gift from the gods.

Rich