4 ms·
Manual for PUB (a markup language in 1971) – Larry Tesler
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- robin_reala 2y agoThe cover image is a Hieronymous Bosch woodcut of an English pub. I’m not sure the author has seen the rest of Hieronymous Bosch’s oeuvre. Edit: seems I phrased this badly, my point was that a Georgian woodcut circa 1810 is unlikely to be from Bosch (1450 – 1516).
- JohnDeHope 2y ago[flagged]
- robin_reala 2y agoYou’re allowed to think what you like (personally I’m going for an inventive mind, potentially helped by mushrooms or ergot); my point was that a Georgian woodcut circa 1810 is unlikely to be from Bosch (1450 – 1516).
- JohnDeHope 2y agoAhh! That totally did not come through in your earlier comment. I'm sorry I jumped to the conclusion that you were trying to police my art appreciation. That sort of thing really grates on my nerves.
- mitchbob 2y agoLarry was a worldly guy with wide-ranging interests. Were you thinking that if he knew about The Garden of Earthly Delights he wouldn't have chosen a woodcut of a pub for the PUB manual? Bosch has been thought of as a heretic [1] and that could have been part of the appeal for Larry, who pushed against orthodoxies throughout his career. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch#Interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch#Interpretatio...
- shrubble 2y agoDoesn't really seem out of the ordinary; even in high school in the 1980s the Bosch paintings were well-known.
- rjsw 2y ago... from album covers.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- The-Old-Hacker 2y agoThis 2020 document says that it's a “cut-and-paste” from a Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) woodcut print. Which seems much more likely. https://www.saildart.org/simple/booklet/SAILDART_PREVIEW_2020_0330_good.pdf https://www.saildart.org/simple/booklet/SAILDART_PREVIEW_202...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EternalFury 2y agoThe irony is that this rendered pretty poorly on my phone. Ignore me, though, as I like the idea.
- pmkary 2y agoPub getting attention made my day. I wondered how everyone forgot about it and how no one ever mentioned that it actually gave birth to TeX and Web. Good job hacker news
- throwaway81523 2y agotroff (1972) and eqn (1974) also existed. I don't know if they were influenced by PUB. SCRIPT (1968)[1] had macros but it's unclear whether they were present at the beginning or added later. RUNOFF (ancestor of troff) doesn't appear to have had macros. I've heard that Forth documentation was produced using a formatter written in Forth, that let the user switch between documet text and Forth code, but idk the dates or specific for this. Anyway I'm sure PUB was influential but the idea of markup languages with macros certainly wasn't unique to it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCRIPT_(markup) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCRIPT_(markup)
- pmkary 2y agoI actually came across this manual two months ago and studied it in deep. Your comment was greatly appreciated, I will research all of them. Thank you!
- larsbrinkhoff 2y agoI understand Scribe also started as a set of PUB macros.
- throwaway81523 2y ago"The PDP-10 operating system was TENEX, later called TOPS-10." (PUB manual, page 2). What.
- kps 2y agoShould be “The PDP-10 operating system was TENEX, later called TOPS-20”, no?
- throwaway81523 2y agoUm no.
- kps 2y agoIt was (after porting to DEC's simpler paging hardware and purchase from BBN in 1973), but if that's not what your comment referred to, then what?
- larsbrinkhoff 2y agoThere seem to be two mistakes here. First, the SAIL PDP-10 didn't run TENEX. SAIL maintained their own operating system based on the PDP-6 Monitor, called WAITS. I guess you could say its closest relative might be TOPS-10; certainly many programs could easily be ported over back and forth. Second, as noted here, TENEX was not "later called TOPS-10". It also wasn't called TOPS-20. DEC took TENEX, and with extensive modifications and updates produced TOPS-20. Meanwhile TENEX continued to be developed and maintained separately at sites that elected not to switch to DEC-20 machines.
- gregabbott 2y agoIn case anyone has copy they'd like to typeset as monospace plain text, I made a tool to do this recently. If you might find it useful, feel free to play with it at https://monotext.pages.dev/ https://monotext.pages.dev/
- fmajid 2y agoNSO’s ForcedEntry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FORCEDENTRY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FORCEDENTRY) showed how anything scriptable creates potential security vulnerabilities.
- sincarne 2y agoMy grandad worked on a computerized press in this era. He primarily printed short-run text books for southern Ontario universities. Whatever markup they used had a syntax that allowed emboldening and italicization, but you had to specify the end of the formatting (obviously). Professors never would, and the first run of a book would always be all bold and italic. The profs would get mad, and tell him “the computer should JUST KNOW.”
- wslh 2y agoThis article reminds me of two experimental ~20% projects we worked on at one of my companies in the mid-2000s. Some unreleased projects age like fine wine, offering a chance to inspire others years later. The first project was a wiki with active scripting capabilities. By “active scripting,” I mean that the wiki could execute embedded code snippets and display the results directly on the page. This concept feels somewhat akin to modern tools like Project Jupyter or Wikipedia’s feature that calculates ages and other data dynamically. The second project was more radical and linked with the first, aiming to introduce a new kind of collaborative scripting. We developed a small proof of concept (PoC) by modifying Jython [1] to enable shared namespaces among users. This allowed users to access each other’s functions, objects, streams, variables, and more—in real time—creating an experience reminiscent of the Matrix in Neuromancer [2]. All in Python. [1] https://www.jython.org/ https://www.jython.org/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
- nj5rq 2y agoThat website format is very interesting. The original text (while also hyperlinked) on one side, and notes/explanations on the other side.