>> But sed, awk, perl, python, ... lex and parse once into an AST or
>> bytecode, removing the recurring cost of comments, etc. that impact
>> groff. So I don't think it's an even comparison.
>
> Of course it's a valid comparison. Which sed or awk or shell script is
> distributed in a stripped/compressed form? Do they store their AST
> somewhere, so as to avoid recompilation? They do not. Just as
> with groff, every parse starts anew.
Comments inside of a macro definition get scanned each time it's called.
This justifies the first paragraph above.
In the wild, almost all comments occur outside macro definitions.
This justifies the second.
Thus comments are harmless in practice.
Doug
An amusing Unix-related snippet from a science fiction site:
https://www.tor.com/2019/03/12/more-please-authors-we-wish-would-publish-mo…
> Back when the world was young and a ten megabyte hard drive required a team of six sturdy workers to move, P. J. Plauger quite reliably delivered to the world a story or so per year—memorable tales like “Wet Blanket” and “Child of All Ages,” stories that won him a Campbell for Best New Writer and a Hugo nomination for Best Short Story. Tragedy struck when he was enticed away from science fiction by the seedy world of Unix, which offered its arcane practitioners unnecessary luxuries like indoor living, food, and even health care.
(The rest of the page is not relevant to this list)
Tony.
--
f.anthony.n.finch <dot(a)dotat.at> http://dotat.at
>A bit off topic (sorry) but wondering about that PDF conversion. This
>may be a dumb question but did you ever try the PDF conversion in
>calibre ( https://calibre-ebook.com )?
To answer my own question. Yes, that was a dumb question. I completely
over looked the 'image' in Nelson's post
>The result is a
>searchable document, with a single page image per PDF page, rather
>than the mixed bitmap scan of 1-up and 2-up pages in the original PDF
>file.
Calibre's PDF to whatever conversion doesn't do anything worthwhile with images.
The posting of the link
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/regnecentralen/RC_4000_Reference_Manual_Jun69.pdf
brought back old memories. When I moved to Aarhus University in
Denmark in December 1973, I found that the Department of Chemistry
where I worked had a Regnecentralen RC-4000 minicomputer with paper
tape input that was used to manage the department's accounting. It
had a dedicated operator who kept in running nicely until at least
after I left in 1977. It had too little physical memory to be
considered practical for the quantum chemistry work that I was then
engaged in, and may not even have had a Fortran compiler; instead, we
used the campus CDC 6400 for our research.
In memory of the RC-4000, and Per Brinch Hansen's (13 Nov
1938--31-Jul-2007) many contributions to the literature of computer
science, programming language design, and parallel computing, I
prepared an enhancement of its manual, available here:
http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/RC-4000/
The Web page that comes up gives a directory of the available files,
and documents the steps needed to produce them. The result is a
searchable document, with a single page image per PDF page, rather
than the mixed bitmap scan of 1-up and 2-up pages in the original PDF
file.
Despite my 40+ year engagement in the TeX community, I only recently
learned via the texhax mailing of some PDFTeX internals that allow one
to construct a file that can retypeset n-up files into 1-up format.
I therefore make this posting in the hope that someone else might be
encouraged to tackle similar document improvements in the bitsavers
archives. Although it takes a bit of experimentation, with the
exception of the OCR conversion, the entire operation can be done with
free software on pretty much any modern computing platform, thanks to
the portability of the needed software.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 -
- University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2019 15:29:11 -0700
>From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe(a)math.utah.edu>
>To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs(a)tuhs.org>
>Subject: Re: [TUHS] Failing Memory of an Algol Based System from years ago
>Message-ID: <CMM.0.95.0.1552170551.beebe(a)gamma.math.utah.edu>
... snip ...
> http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/RC-4000/
>
>The Web page that comes up gives a directory of the available files,
>and documents the steps needed to produce them. The result is a
>searchable document, with a single page image per PDF page, rather
>than the mixed bitmap scan of 1-up and 2-up pages in the original PDF
>file.
>Despite my 40+ year engagement in the TeX community, I only recently
>learned via the texhax mailing of some PDFTeX internals that allow one
>to construct a file that can retypeset n-up files into 1-up format.
>
>I therefore make this posting in the hope that someone else might be
>encouraged to tackle similar document improvements in the bitsavers.
>archives. Although it takes a bit of experimentation, with the
>exception of the OCR conversion, the entire operation can be done with
>free software on pretty much any modern computing platform, thanks to
>the portability of the needed software.
A bit off topic (sorry) but wondering about that PDF conversion. This
may be a dumb question but did you ever try the PDF conversion in
calibre ( https://calibre-ebook.com )?
I like the PDF to htmlz conversion even if mostly the result still
needs (a lot of) extra work.
Cheers,
uncle rubl
Clem,
I think the "Algol machine" you have in mind is the RC-2000 (not quite sure
of the designation--could look it up in the attic if it matters) designed by
Per Brinch Hansen for Regencentralen (again, the name may not be quite right).
The manual used Algol as a hardware description language. The instruction
set was not unusual. It has come up before in TUHS. I have the manual
if you need more info.
Doug
i have worked in tv, developing systems for archive restoration for many years.
if you have valuable sticky tapes i suggest you try and contact a lical video archivist, there are other tricks than just baking that can help - old tapes can present complex problems.
<story>
there was a sticky valuable rolling stones 24 track master tape i heard of. it was sent for analysis, and they discovered the stickiness was “vodka and coke” :-).
</story>
-Steve
Today's tape recovery gem. UBC's PDP-11 UNIX tools distribution ca. 1983 which includes UBC BASIC and their RT-11
emulation. It has a couple of bad blocks, but I couldn't find another copy of this anywhere.
http://bitsavers.org/bits/UBC/
If anyone has a complete copy, it would be good to replace it, but most is better than none of it.
