3 ms·

I used to write programs using TECO, a character oriented editor, while at grad school around 1975. I used "dumb" CRT based terminals and occasionally fan-fold

by todd8 6y ago

I used to write programs using TECO, a character oriented editor, while at grad school around 1975. I used "dumb" CRT based terminals and occasionally fan-fold paper terminals with TECO. TECO was quite powerful and had a macro system that allowed macros to be enter and employed to perform edits on the underlying file. Like vim-golf, it was possible with a few commands to do things like reverse the order of the lines of a file. The computer connected to the terminals treated CRT and paper based terminals in the same manner and wrote characters one by one; a line feed caused the paper or the 24 lines displayed on the CRT to scroll up a line. Because the terminals operated no faster than 30 characters per second (300 baud) it was most practical to keep a few lines of code in one's head while entering a sequence of editing instructions and only ever so often have the editor "print" a few lines in the region one was working on the screen to see how things were going. Even though this sounds quite primitive and painful, it was a big improvement over using a keypunch machine to program on punch cards.

dheera 6y ago
On the note of terminal displays, I've been looking for a good e-Ink tablet that runs either Ubuntu Linux, or Android with access to the Play Store, and has a decent enough refresh rate so I could run an ssh client and code on it from time to time with a Bluetooth keyboard for eye strain relief, and for coding outdoors in full sun. I have a couple of ideas: A large e-Ink display connected to a Raspberry Pi A Boox tablet Are there any others I should consider for this use case? My biggest concern is refresh rate. I usually edit with vim. Greyscale syntax highlighting would be a plus.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  I have a boox, I think it would work fine for a linear text, but ssh would be a bit hard. you could type commands but a screen scroll would be a 1/4 second or more to reload. I use the boox outside to read documents and then go back inside to code.
- jakecopp 6y ago
  Dasung Paperlike eink monitor! Super expensive unfortunately but they're pretty amazing. https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/dasung-paperlike-3-hd-review https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/dasung-paperlike-3-hd-r...
  - dheera 6y ago
    That refresh rate looks amazing. I mean, damn, you could watch videos on that. But at $1300 it's a little outside my budget -_-
- cpach 6y ago
  Have a look at this: https://alternativebit.fr/posts/ultimate-writer/ https://alternativebit.fr/posts/ultimate-writer/
- swiley 6y ago
  Some of the older e-ink kindles are very easy to get a shell on and are just running a buildroot with X11. The downside is that storage is limited and the partition scheme the OS it ships with is nearly android levels of goofy (all user data has to go on a FAT.) I think I heard someone found an exploit on the most recent one. If the pinephone didn't exist that would be tempting (and it kind of still is, having a small portable Linux machine with a week of battery life was nice even if it could only hold 4Gb.)
- Jaruzel 6y ago
  If you've got money to burn, Waveshare have some nice e-ink displays that you could hook up to a Pi4. https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/epaper-1.htm https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/epaper-1....
- messo 6y ago
  The community around the ReMarkable tablet has made a couple of solutions that makes it possible to use it as a second screen [0], and you could also replace the stock OS with Parabola-rM [1], a linux distro optimized for the ReMarkable. It's not cheap, but not terribly expensive either. I'll get mine in a month or two and plan to try out how it works as a second screen for programing and writing. [0]: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#screen-sharingstreaming https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#screen-shar... [1]: http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/ http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/

by todd8 6y ago

dheera 6y ago

On the note of terminal displays, I've been looking for a good e-Ink tablet that runs either Ubuntu Linux, or Android with access to the Play Store, and has a decent enough refresh rate so I could run an ssh client and code on it from time to time with a Bluetooth keyboard for eye strain relief, and for coding outdoors in full sun. I have a couple of ideas: A large e-Ink display connected to a Raspberry Pi A Boox tablet Are there any others I should consider for this use case? My biggest concern is refresh rate. I usually edit with vim. Greyscale syntax highlighting would be a plus.

grogenaut 6y ago
I have a boox, I think it would work fine for a linear text, but ssh would be a bit hard. you could type commands but a screen scroll would be a 1/4 second or more to reload. I use the boox outside to read documents and then go back inside to code.
jakecopp 6y ago
Dasung Paperlike eink monitor! Super expensive unfortunately but they're pretty amazing. https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/dasung-paperlike-3-hd-review https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/dasung-paperlike-3-hd-r...
- dheera 6y ago
  That refresh rate looks amazing. I mean, damn, you could watch videos on that. But at $1300 it's a little outside my budget -_-
cpach 6y ago
Have a look at this: https://alternativebit.fr/posts/ultimate-writer/ https://alternativebit.fr/posts/ultimate-writer/
swiley 6y ago
Some of the older e-ink kindles are very easy to get a shell on and are just running a buildroot with X11. The downside is that storage is limited and the partition scheme the OS it ships with is nearly android levels of goofy (all user data has to go on a FAT.) I think I heard someone found an exploit on the most recent one. If the pinephone didn't exist that would be tempting (and it kind of still is, having a small portable Linux machine with a week of battery life was nice even if it could only hold 4Gb.)
Jaruzel 6y ago
If you've got money to burn, Waveshare have some nice e-ink displays that you could hook up to a Pi4. https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/epaper-1.htm https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/epaper-1....
messo 6y ago
The community around the ReMarkable tablet has made a couple of solutions that makes it possible to use it as a second screen [0], and you could also replace the stock OS with Parabola-rM [1], a linux distro optimized for the ReMarkable. It's not cheap, but not terribly expensive either. I'll get mine in a month or two and plan to try out how it works as a second screen for programing and writing. [0]: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#screen-sharingstreaming https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#screen-shar... [1]: http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/ http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/