Re: Decimals

wollman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Garrett Wollman) writes:

In article <fxbbdhxh.fsf@xxxxxxxxxx>,
Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Actually, I believe, 128. (TeX was written on DEC-20's, which used
7-bit characters[1].)

Actually, TeX-78 was written on the WAITS[1] operating system,

Okay, a DEC-10. I think it was a 20 by the time I got there.

which normally used six-, seven-, eight-, nine-, and twelve-bit
characters, as the need arose.

That footnote said "Mostly". The PDP-10 could handle bytes of
anywhere from one to 36 bits. (Theoretically, the "size" of a byte
pointer could go up to 63, but I don't recall what happened if you
made it bigger than 36.)

I believe nine-bit characters were conventional, at least for input,

That "for input" is important, I believe. (EMACS on TOPS-20 also used
wider characters for input, and the system tables used 6-bit
characters or 5-and-a-bit-bit characters.)

I never did any assembly language programming on SAIL, but I'm pretty
sure that files were still typically read in as 36-bit words
containing five 7-bit characters and an extra bit.

Looking at the TeXbook, the fonts do, in fact, contain 128 characters.

at SAIL (hence "control-meta-cokebottle" on the Stanford keyboard).

I associate that with lisp machines rather than SAIL terminals, which
I recall being just modified Z-19s. (The modifications including
being able to get black-and-green TV signals on them...or map anybody
else's job to your terminal.)

Later development in that design space gave us the keyboard with
seven shift keys (shift, control, meta, alt, super, hyper, and
front),

Did anybody have both "alt" and "meta"? The lisp machines[1] I used
didn't have "front", but they did have "symbol". I think others
called it "top" or "Greek". Emacs commands in ZWEI[2] could use some
or all of shift, control, meta, super, hyper, or symbol.

[1] TI Explorers

[2] ZWEI was EINE[3] initially.

[3] EINE is not EMACS[4]

[4] Editing MACros. Or Escape Meta Alt Control Shift. Or Eight
Megabytes[5] and Continually Swapping.

[5] Back when that was a nearly unimaginable amount of RAM.

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Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
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