9 Oct
2019
9 Oct
'19
6:38 a.m.
Warner Losh writes:
Venix had vi. At least 2.0 pulled that in from
Berkeley...
But they built it with '#define SMALL' or whatever the #ifdef was for
the 16-bit version. I was working at a court reporting company at the
time, and we had just introduced the court reporters to UNIX for editing,
proofing, and typesetting the transcripts. Within a few weeks they were
blowing through the limits of the 16-bit-restricted Venix vi. I ended up
bootlegging the vi source from a friend so we could compile an un-
restricted address space binary for them to use.
This same bunch of reporters, within a couple of months, were writing
their own awk scripts to look for transcription errors, and their own
troff macros to typeset the final product in client-specific formats.
When I first arrived there they were using Convergent NGEN workstations
to transcribe the tapes. In well under a year we had replaced those
with a Convergent MiniFrame and moved the entire workflow over to
vi/awk/troff spitting out Postscript, most of the tools for which
the reporters wrote themselves.
Today, when I listen to all our "technical support" people at work
whine about how they can't log in to XXX (because they didn't run
ssh-add), it sets my hair on fire. I would so love to put them in
the Waybac Machine and let the old gang school them in "learn to do
your fscking job!"
Sorry, what were we talking about ... ?
--lyndon