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HN discussion of a Bell Labls paper describing the revese engineering of a Linotron 202 machine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10505349 https://news.ycom
by EvanAnderson 8y ago
HN discussion of a Bell Labls paper describing the revese engineering of a Linotron 202 machine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10505349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10505349
There's a good "revisiting" of that paper, too: http://www.eprg.org/papers/202paper.pdf http://www.eprg.org/papers/202paper.pdf
Edit:
The contrast between the Linotron 303 described in this page, and the 202 described in the Bell Labs memo is interesting. The 303 was introduced in 1974 and uses film-based fonts, whereas the 202, introduced in 1978, uses fonts that are stored digitally as vectors. I naively assumed that a "303" would be a newer, more advanced machine than a "202", but that's not the case.
- thawkins 8y agoI wrote parts of the the hyphenation package used in the H&J version of the L202, there where 3 versions , 202 H&j, just send it Cora 5 marked up text and it would justify, hyphenate and set it. The L 202 slave, which you had to send it xy positions for each line and wordspacing etc. And the VIP emulator slave which emulated the older VIP photosetter. There was also a very rare ELA (exotic language adaptation) version with a large 80gb CDC disk pack on the side which could do Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Korean. Finally there was the graphics version, which could set embedded pictures but it had to have precision photosetter tube with a clean bond on the faceplate otherwise you got banding.
- tinus_hn 8y agoAre you sure that was 80Gb? An 80 Gb disk pack would fill a small room.
- michrassena 8y agoAlmost certainly a typo. The CDC 877 disk pack was 80MB.