2025-08-04 18:53:03 <ajhidd      > forth: LOAD ini.fth
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2025-08-04 18:53:33 <ajhidd      > forthBot: S" Cow horn with number PI written on it "S IMAGE
2025-08-04 18:54:00 <forthBot    > https://i.ibb.co/rKk5YFWM/mforth-image-Mps-Yng.png
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2025-08-04 23:14:44 <veltas      > PolyForth manual looks really nice, hate to admit as it was made in Word 2010
2025-08-04 23:15:09 <xentrac     > haha
2025-08-04 23:15:18 <veltas      > I think Elizabeth Rather probably knows all the Word hacks, Word is dreadful but if you're a Word whisperer you can make good stuff with it
2025-08-04 23:15:22 <xentrac     > enough effort can wring good results from the worst tools
2025-08-04 23:15:33 <xentrac     > but it's disappointing that it wasn't made in PolyForth
2025-08-04 23:16:23 <veltas      > A LOT of technical stuff is made in Word, e.g. most of the specs I rely on at work
2025-08-04 23:16:53 <xentrac     > but the Unix manual is made in Unix, the W3C specs are made on the Web, the Cedar manual is made in Cedar, the TeX manual is written in TeX, and the Emacs manual is written (and read) in Emacs
2025-08-04 23:17:10 <veltas      > I think it's cool that K&R C and the ANSI C standard was written in what was essentially an in-house typography system
2025-08-04 23:17:26 <xentrac     > well, that was kind of how they got the project funded internally
2025-08-04 23:17:34 <veltas      > Why it annoys me that in later C standards they changed to LaTeX
2025-08-04 23:17:54 <xentrac     > Unix was a word processor for the Bell Labs patent attorneys
2025-08-04 23:18:08 <veltas      > A crazy amount of old computing tech was about printing and typography
2025-08-04 23:18:36 <veltas      > Xerox was a huge deal in tech for ages, and invented loads
2025-08-04 23:18:50 <veltas      > Never seemed to capitalise on it
2025-08-04 23:19:02 <xentrac     > yeah.  Cedar was one example of that
2025-08-04 23:19:31 <xentrac     > hmm, well, I think they made a fair bit of money from selling laser printers
2025-08-04 23:20:59 <veltas      > They drove a lot of stuff regarding personal computers, GUIs, WYSIWYG, LANs; yet it all slipped right through their fingers
2025-08-04 23:21:26 <xentrac     > yeah, but they made more money selling laser printers than it cost them to develop all the rest of that
2025-08-04 23:21:32 <veltas      > I think blamed on upper management for being too focused on numbers and the core business, neglecting the fruits of their R&D
2025-08-04 23:21:48 <xentrac     > they also got a chunk of Apple stock IIRC
2025-08-04 23:22:23 <veltas      > E.g. look at Microsoft, they've not made that mistake, they're not sentimental about Windows at all.  It's annoying as a regular Windows user, but fiscally I can't blame them.
2025-08-04 23:22:26 <xentrac     > laser printers sold because the world was full of personal computers with WYSIWYG editors and GUIs that could share the printers over a LAN
2025-08-04 23:23:07 <xentrac     > Microsoft is sort of the opposite: they made business deals to kill good technology on many occasions if they thought it might compete with them
2025-08-04 23:23:29 <xentrac     > https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html was one of the most egregious examples in the period we're talking about
2025-08-04 23:24:28 <xentrac     > Xerox did make some effort to sell personal computers with WYSIWYG editors and GUIs themselves, but they were totally incompetent at it
2025-08-04 23:26:51 <xentrac     > speaking of in-house typography systems, I spent some time digging into the history of Hershey fonts, and I learned that Hershey put together a whole in-house typography system at the National Bureau of Standards https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0662398/page/n1/mode/2up
2025-08-04 23:27:47 <xentrac     > basically they needed to be able to typeset equations and the fancy new phototypesetter they had bought was a piece of shit.  so they wrote their own LaTeX-like system https://ia904509.us.archive.org/1/items/contributiontoco424wolc/contributiontoco424wolc.pdf
2025-08-04 23:28:06 <xentrac     > except that it was a lot more manual with respect to positioning things
2025-08-04 23:28:32 <veltas      > Interesting
2025-08-04 23:29:43 <xentrac     > later on he rewrote the system in BASIC on a Macintosh when he was teaching at the Naval Postgraduate School in 01995 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/36717536.pdf
2025-08-04 23:30:30 <xentrac     > The original version was on some IBM mainframe, maybe Stretch
2025-08-04 23:30:59 <xentrac     > the markup format is kind of what you'd expect for early-60s punchcard mainframe code
2025-08-04 23:39:21 <veltas      > That's why we've all got not-made-here syndrome in software
2025-08-04 23:39:38 <xentrac     > why?
2025-08-04 23:39:44 <veltas      > We've all got PTSD from some licensing incident or proprietary printer driver
2025-08-04 23:40:02 <xentrac     > hmm, well, that does happen
2025-08-04 23:40:25 <xentrac     > also though as I've become a better programmer the build-vs.-buy tradeoff changes
2025-08-04 23:40:46 <xentrac     > (where "buy" also includes things like open-source libraries)
2025-08-04 23:41:16 <xentrac     > when I started programming, BASIC was *magic*
2025-08-04 23:41:59 <xentrac     > I had no idea that the BASIC interpreter was just another program not very different from the programs I wrote in it
2025-08-04 23:42:12 <veltas      > I feel like the price vs quality graph has an almost negative correlation in software
2025-08-04 23:42:51 <xentrac     > I remember a friend told me he once heard someone watching a starfield screensaver ask, "Is that a real program or is it something someone wrote?"
2025-08-04 23:43:05 <veltas      > That 5K BASIC ROM that came built-in with the Apple II sounds good, I'd like to try that some time
2025-08-04 23:43:40 <xentrac     > I think the Integer BASIC ROM is easily obtainable
2025-08-04 23:43:53 <veltas      > I wouldn't be surprised
2025-08-04 23:43:59 <veltas      > I'm sure there's a nice disassembly somewhere
2025-08-04 23:44:06 <xentrac     > the full source was published in IIRC Byte
2025-08-04 23:44:36 <veltas      > The starfield screensaver I know from Windows is basically an example program in the original OpenGL red book
2025-08-04 23:44:41 <veltas      > Not sure which came first
2025-08-04 23:44:42 <xentrac     > link dump:
2025-08-04 23:44:44 <xentrac     > https://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-original-apple-fr-1570573636 #Apple Integer BASIC #history #interpreters
2025-08-04 23:44:47 <xentrac     > ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/documentation/misc/Apple%20II%20Original%20ROM%20Info.pdf #Apple II ROM information from 1997/2004; includes a hex dump of the 12KiB of the ROM, the SWEET_16 source code and documentation, the #floating-point package source code, etc. #history #pdf
2025-08-04 23:44:52 <xentrac     > https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Users/David_Craig/Apple2OriginalROMInfo.TXT text version of #Apple II ROM information. #history
2025-08-04 23:44:55 <xentrac     > http://www.woz.org/letters/apple-basic/ #Apple BASIC story by Woz. #history #interpreters
2025-08-04 23:44:58 <xentrac     > http://www.landsnail.com/a2ref2.htm reference to #Apple Integer BASIC commands. #history #interpreters
2025-08-04 23:45:01 <xentrac     > http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/apple/apple1/basic/ Eric Smith’s disassembly of the #Apple Integer BASIC interpreter.  #interpreters
2025-08-04 23:45:04 <xentrac     > https://gist.github.com/robey/1bb6a99cd19e95c81979b1828ad70612 #Apple I monitor ROM dissection. #history
2025-08-04 23:45:07 <xentrac     > http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?t=726 how #Apple Integer BASIC works. #interpreters #history
2025-08-04 23:45:10 <xentrac     > http://www.callapple.org/docs/ap2/special/integerbasic.pdf disassembly of #Apple Integer BASIC. #interpreters #history #PDF
2025-08-04 23:45:34 <veltas      > "Integer BASIC" sounds much more forthy than a normal BASIC interpreter
2025-08-04 23:45:42 <xentrac     > but what I was saying about build vs. buy is that when you're a beginning programmer "build" is hopeless because you can't program your way out of a paper bag
2025-08-04 23:45:44 <veltas      > Also 5K sounds more Forthy lol
2025-08-04 23:46:24 <xentrac     > but as you get better, you become able to build bigger and higher-quality things, so there are things that it makes sense to write yourself
2025-08-04 23:46:53 <xentrac     > and as you continue getting better, you get faster at that, so things it wouldn't have made sense to write yourself a few years ago become sensible
2025-08-04 23:48:50 <xentrac     > and of course ego tempts you to inflate that estimation ;)
2025-08-04 23:49:25 <xentrac     > because when you think "I could write that in a weekend" you aren't thinking about the three hairy bugs you're going to write and then spend a week tracking down
2025-08-04 23:49:45 <tpnix       > hahah
2025-08-04 23:50:21 <xentrac     > how've you been, tpnix?
2025-08-04 23:51:30 <tpnix       > xentrac, Ive been excellent thanx xentrac, Im running Nixos on this PC now and life is very good, how about yourself ?
2025-08-04 23:51:59 <veltas      > "there is no original assembly file for Integer BASIC.  The entire program was written out by hand."  based
2025-08-04 23:52:35 <xentrac     > oh, of course.  because what would he have written it on?  an HP 3000 at work?
2025-08-04 23:52:44 <xentrac     > tpnix: not dead yet!  glad to hear about NixOS
2025-08-04 23:53:05 <tpnix       > xentrac, my Mecrisp-Stellaris language server is coming along nicely, it's working --> https://chiselapp.com/user/tp/repository/mecrisp-stellaris-lsp/file?name=pics/now-with-examples.png&ci=tip
2025-08-04 23:53:53 <tpnix       > xentrac, not dead yet is good, it means we can finish more projects
2025-08-04 23:54:57 <xentrac     > LSP? excellent!
2025-08-04 23:54:58 <tpnix       > veltas, back in those days, many didnt have a 'printer'
2025-08-04 23:55:04 <veltas      > I actually quite like writing stuff out by hand, and Forth is especially good at being hand-written
2025-08-04 23:55:26 <xentrac     > I think Wozniak's only computer was the Apple I
2025-08-04 23:55:47 <xentrac     > though I don't know why he wouldn't have written an assembler on the Apple I
2025-08-04 23:55:57 <tpnix       > I remember my first printer, it was a A3 Centronics dot matrix on a stand I bought at a auction with a SWTP6800 dev system
2025-08-04 23:56:08 <xentrac     > I've written a certain amount of code out on paper, though less now that I have a cellphone in my pocket
2025-08-04 23:56:14 <veltas      > I was writing some Z80 on paper the other day, trying to figure out the fastest way to divide by 10 and get modulus by 10
2025-08-04 23:56:34 <veltas      > With different requirements
2025-08-04 23:58:12 <xentrac     > what did you come up with?
2025-08-04 23:59:26 <veltas      > Mainly noticed that I can calculate modulus by 10 fast by calculating modulus by 2 (low bit) and modulus by 5 (binary, hex, bytes etc you can add them all up without affecting the value mod 5)