From dave at horsfall.org Tue Apr 7 07:58:00 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2020 07:58:00 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, ARPAnet! Message-ID: RFC 1 "Host Software" was published on this day in 1969 by Steve Crocker; it described the IMP (the forerunner of today's routers). -- Dave From grog at lemis.com Tue Apr 7 09:19:08 2020 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2020 09:19:08 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, ARPAnet! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20200406231908.GB60994@eureka.lemis.com> On Tuesday, 7 April 2020 at 7:58:00 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > RFC 1 "Host Software" was published on this day in 1969 by Steve Crocker; > it described the IMP (the forerunner of today's routers). And I always put it as 30 October 1969, the day the first packets were sent. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dave at horsfall.org Tue Apr 7 10:50:53 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2020 10:50:53 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, ARPAnet! In-Reply-To: <20200406231908.GB60994@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20200406231908.GB60994@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 7 Apr 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > And I always put it as 30 October 1969, the day the first packets were > sent. https://www.onthisday.com/day/april/7 ``1969 The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1'' I'm not going to "debate" this any further; there is a provision to correct them if you feel motivated enough. -- Dave From wkt at tuhs.org Fri Apr 10 18:53:29 2020 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 18:53:29 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Discord chat in about 13 hours? Message-ID: Anybody feel like a text/voice chat on the ClassicCmp Discord server in about 13 hours, say 2200 UTC? #coff and the General voice channel. I'll pop on for an hour but start whenever you feel like. Cheers, Warren -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wkt at tuhs.org Sat Apr 11 08:11:31 2020 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2020 08:11:31 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Discord chat in about 13 hours? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20200410221131.GA31654@minnie.tuhs.org> On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 06:53:29PM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote: > Anybody feel like a text/voice chat on the ClassicCmp Discord server in > about 13 hours, say 2200 UTC? > #coff and the General voice channel. Looks like just Charles and I chatting right now. Warren From imp at bsdimp.com Sat Apr 11 13:48:44 2020 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 21:48:44 -0600 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Discord chat in about 13 hours? In-Reply-To: <20200410221131.GA31654@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20200410221131.GA31654@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 4:12 PM Warren Toomey wrote: > On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 06:53:29PM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote: > > Anybody feel like a text/voice chat on the ClassicCmp Discord server > in > > about 13 hours, say 2200 UTC? > > #coff and the General voice channel. > > Looks like just Charles and I chatting right now. > Doh... missed this... was busy gardening today. Warner > Warren > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Mon Apr 13 19:01:13 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 19:01:13 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] On having a slash Message-ID: Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those green sheets. In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over thine head... These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. What're other bods' experiences? [*] Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off at Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. -- Dave, bored at home From david at kdbarto.org Mon Apr 13 21:30:23 2020 From: david at kdbarto.org (David Barto) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 04:30:23 -0700 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they specifically went through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark up and being very careful to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times. I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I still slash my 7. IDK why I stopped the one and not the other. A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away. David > On Apr 13, 2020, at 2:01 AM, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those green sheets. > > In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over thine head... > > These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. > > What're other bods' experiences? > > [*] > Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off at Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. > > -- Dave, bored at home > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff From clemc at ccc.com Mon Apr 13 22:38:49 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 08:38:49 -0400 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> References: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> Message-ID: FWIW -- I still slash both zeros and sevens. I was probably 12 when I was taught that trick, plus the print head of an ASR33 slashed zero's and 1, l, 7 were all distinct. So sat the time, it seemed cool and advanced. Then it just became a habit, and as we know, old habits are difficult to change and frankly, I never saw the reason to stop. My handwriting is a bit of a mess as it is, so anything I do the make it clear has always been considered a good thing by people around me.🤔 On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 7:31 AM David Barto wrote: > Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they specifically went > through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark up and being very careful > to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times. I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I > still slash my 7. IDK why I stopped the one and not the other. > > A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away. > > David > > > On Apr 13, 2020, at 2:01 AM, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > > > Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned > supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the > glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and > Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the hots for > one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those green sheets. > > > > In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in > order to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* > slashed your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box > over thine head... > > > > These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise > an eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. > > > > What're other bods' experiences? > > > > [*] > > Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off > at Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. > > > > -- Dave, bored at home > > _______________________________________________ > > COFF mailing list > > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul at guertin.net Mon Apr 13 22:53:21 2020 From: paul at guertin.net (Paul Guertin) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 08:53:21 -0400 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> References: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> Message-ID: My first exposure to computing was 8-bit computers, I was 9 or 10 years old. I typed in countless BASIC programs from magazines and they used a slashed zero, so naturally I picked it up and started using it in math class. I explained to the teacher that it was a "computer thing" and she let me continue doing it. I eventually stopped slashing my zeros about 10 years later except when writing programs longhand. I was taught to write '1' with a serif and '7' with a short crossbar, and I still do to this day. I also write an open '4' similar to the one on 7-segment displays, except with the horizontal stroke extending slightly past the vertical. When I started teaching math, I got into the habit of horizontally slashing 'Z' on the blackboard but not on paper. Speaking of which, how do y'all represent a space character in writing? I had a comp. sci teacher who would use a slashed 'b' character, but I never liked that (too big, hard to distinguish from normal letters). I prefer using something like character U+2423, a short straight bracket lying on its back on the baseline. Tangentially related, I remember when I started learning about computers that almost everyone used a hyphen between a modifier and the character: you'd write "Control-C" or "Shift-6". Then something changed and how it seems more common to use a '+' character and write it "Control+C". Wikipedia's article for "Control-C" uses the hyphen in the title but the plus sign in the article itself. Any idea why it changed? P. From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Mon Apr 13 23:21:59 2020 From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 15:21:59 +0200 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7a633ed7a5afc399f895825dddfb0a53@firemail.de> 'Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls...' I slash both zeros and sevens too. With regards to the zero I learned it at the university in the 70ths, however I believe that slashing sevens I learned already in the school days(60ths) or even at home by my parents (50ths). From cym224 at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 23:23:35 2020 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 09:23:35 -0400 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 13/04/2020, Dave Horsfall wrote: > Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned > supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find > the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars > and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the > hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those > green sheets. > > In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order > to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? I have always seen a slashed 7 and Z in European writing (along with exaggerated serifs on Wons). For zeroes and oscars, I dimly recall -- or possibly hallucinate -- that some primeval standard specified putting a tail on oscar and leaving zero alone. A bit of searching turned up nothing, though. N. From michael at kjorling.se Mon Apr 13 23:36:48 2020 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:36:48 +0000 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <197d2ed4-0b12-4e11-bf8a-bc2f8d18e3cc@localhost> On 13 Apr 2020 09:23 -0400, from cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo): > For zeroes and oscars, I dimly recall -- or possibly hallucinate -- > that some primeval standard specified putting a tail on oscar and > leaving zero alone. A bit of searching turned up nothing, though. The original Palm Pilot "Graffiti" alphabet, designed to use single-stroke for all unaccented characters, had O (oh) and 0 (zero) both as plain circles drawn counterclockwise starting at the top (separated into different drawing areas so the OS would know which you intended), but Q was drawn as an O with a short tail to the right at the end. Might that possibly be what you're recalling? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS) -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?” From mike.ab3ap at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 00:10:50 2020 From: mike.ab3ap at gmail.com (Mike Markowski) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 10:10:50 -0400 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> Message-ID: Showing the usefulness of that, back around 1985 I was in a training session at Unisys and the instructor told us about his time as a programmer in Vietnam during wartime. He was part of a group that modified software for artillery fire control systems in the field, and each time one of the soldier programmers got orders to return home he would leave an easter egg in the code. A few days later a message might pop up saying, "Drinking a beer at home watching tv, wish you were here??" or little things along those lines. The instructor said one guy, however, went into the code and globally replaced variable names with combinations of 1, l, 0, O. Since the 1/l and 0/O were displayed identically, the programmers didn't find the prank funny. Our instructor said as he traveled the US training groups, he hoped he would find the guy. 10 or 15 years later he was still more than a tad angry. All for lack of slashes and serifs. Incidentally, living in Austria I was surprised to see ones commonly written looking nearly like upside down Vs. Mike Markowski On 4/13/20 8:38 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > FWIW -- I still slash both zeros and sevens.   I was probably 12 when I > was taught that trick, plus the print head of an ASR33 slashed zero's > and 1, l, 7 were all distinct. So sat the time, it seemed cool and > advanced.  Then it just became a habit, and as we know, old habits are > difficult to change and frankly, I never saw the reason to stop.  My > handwriting is a bit of a mess as it is, so anything I do the make it > clear has always been considered a good thing by people around me.🤔 > > On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 7:31 AM David Barto > wrote: > > Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they > specifically went through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark > up and being very careful to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times. > I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I still slash my 7. IDK why I > stopped the one and not the other. > > A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away. > >         David From imp at bsdimp.com Tue Apr 14 00:12:49 2020 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 08:12:49 -0600 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 6:53 AM Paul Guertin wrote: > Tangentially related, I remember when I started learning > about computers that almost everyone used a hyphen between > a modifier and the character: you'd write "Control-C" or > "Shift-6". Then something changed and how it seems more > common to use a '+' character and write it "Control+C". > Wikipedia's article for "Control-C" uses the hyphen in the > title but the plus sign in the article itself. Any idea > why it changed? > Because it was always wrong by a strict interpretation of the hyphenation rules of English. In English, one can say "I have anal-retentive tendencies" (with a hyphen) but also "I am anal retentive" (without). Both of these phrases are correct because when two or more words are used to modify a noun that follows, they are hyphenated, otherwise they are not. So phrases like "the control-c character" or "the control-v sequence" are correct, but it should be "hit control c to abort" (without a hyphen) by this rule. However, that's not the full story. When you are telling a user to hit "control c" in a technical manual, when you hyphenate it carries a connotation to many readers (mostly non-technical ones) to press the control key, release it and then do the same with 'c', which as we all know won't work. "Conrol+c" however connotes to many doing both at the same time, so that convention was adopted to avoid the confusion about what '-' means and dodge the rather tricky hyphenation rules (which I've stated only in brief, btw). So this convention shifted as computers became more mainstream. Warner P.S. Yes, I know that firetruck used to be fire-truck and it was always hyphenated for a time, even when not used in a phrase like 'fire-truck company'. That's one of the exceptions, and Control-C also fell under that convention. But technical writers started to evolve it to '+' in maybe the 90s to help convey the notion of both at the same time.... and coincidentally to avoid silly arguments about convention vs "the rules" that made things more confusing, not less. P.P.S. I don't have a good source to this other than second-hand recollection of my wife who used to do technical writing in the 90s, and half-remembered usenet flame wars. The English rule, though, can be found in any style manual, and is direct from a former English professor (also my wife). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Tue Apr 14 00:21:52 2020 From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 16:21:52 +0200 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> Message-ID: 'Since the 1/l and 0/O were displayed identically, the programmers didn't find the prank funny. Our instructor said as he traveled the US training groups, he hoped he would find the guy. 10 or 15 years later he was still more than a tad angry. All for lack of slashes and serifs.' the 1/l/i confusion was a real problem in those days when I saw numberless frustrated programmers whose programs did anything but the expected. From imp at bsdimp.com Tue Apr 14 00:23:49 2020 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 08:23:49 -0600 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 8:22 AM Thomas Paulsen wrote: > 'Since the 1/l and 0/O were displayed > identically, the programmers didn't find the prank funny. Our > instructor said as he traveled the US training groups, he hoped he would > find the guy. 10 or 15 years later he was still more than a tad angry. > All for lack of slashes and serifs.' > > the 1/l/i confusion was a real problem in those days when I saw numberless > frustrated programmers whose programs did anything but the expected. > There's many obfuscation tools for 'C' that existed back in the day which did the above automatically. I've had the displeasure to debug code run through that for which the original source has been lost... "Pleasure" ... right. I'll go with that since this is still polite company. Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rudi.j.blom at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 01:14:44 2020 From: rudi.j.blom at gmail.com (Rudi Blom) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 22:14:44 +0700 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash Message-ID: Remember I learned slashing my zeroes, small bar in sevens and zets, curly letter X. This was when a studied Mathematics fro a while at the University of Technology in Delft, the Netherlands.. I think it had to do with avoiding misunderstandings in scribbled formulars in a time we still did a lot of real writing semester papers. This was around mid-70tish for me. From krewat at kilonet.net Tue Apr 14 01:29:07 2020 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 11:29:07 -0400 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> References: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> Message-ID: <7a49e48b-eccc-e966-3fe8-c482676381c1@kilonet.net> I slash my 0's, but that's it, having always had TECO on a PDP-10 with an LA36 to start with. I remember a lot of my math teachers that had ZERO experience with a computer marking up things as you describe. Z, 7, 0 (zero), etc. Maybe mathematical formulas were the origin? ak On 4/13/2020 7:30 AM, David Barto wrote: > Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they specifically went through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark up and being very careful to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times. I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I still slash my 7. IDK why I stopped the one and not the other. > > A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away. > > David > >> On Apr 13, 2020, at 2:01 AM, Dave Horsfall wrote: >> >> Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those green sheets. >> >> In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over thine head... >> >> These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. >> >> What're other bods' experiences? >> >> [*] >> Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off at Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. >> >> -- Dave, bored at home >> _______________________________________________ >> COFF mailing list >> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org >> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > From pdagog at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 01:40:14 2020 From: pdagog at gmail.com (Pierre DAVID) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 17:40:14 +0200 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: <7a49e48b-eccc-e966-3fe8-c482676381c1@kilonet.net> References: <5AFF5796-5D64-4CCB-8FCE-E06005282D79@kdbarto.org> <7a49e48b-eccc-e966-3fe8-c482676381c1@kilonet.net> Message-ID: <20200413154014.GA30852@vagabond> On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 11:29:07AM -0400, Arthur Krewat wrote: >I slash my 0's, but that's it, having always had TECO on a PDP-10 >with an LA36 to start with. > >I remember a lot of my math teachers that had ZERO experience with a >computer marking up things as you describe. Z, 7, 0 (zero), etc. >Maybe mathematical formulas were the origin? > When I was a student, I once cheated during an exam (I know, I'm ashamed) by giving the answer to my neighbor and friend: I gave him the good answer, which was a "0" (zero). My friend got a bad grade, since he read "ø", the symbol for "empty set". Pierre From paul at guertin.net Tue Apr 14 03:35:20 2020 From: paul at guertin.net (Paul Guertin) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:35:20 -0400 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dixit Nemo (2020-04-13 9:23 a.m.): > European writing (along with exaggerated serifs on Wons). I would love to see a study correlating the serif length on 1 with both the age of the writer and the place he or she learned to write. Most Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some of them write normal serifs, others go full CVS receipt and end up with serifs longer than the character they're seriffing. P. From crossd at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 03:59:22 2020 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:59:22 -0400 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. Message-ID: So I imagine that most readers of this list have heard that a number of US states are actively looking for COBOL programmers. If you have not, the background is that, in the US, a number of unemployment insurance systems have mainframe backends running applications mostly written in COBOL. Due to the economic downturn as a result of COVID-19, these systems are being overwhelmed with unprecedented numbers of newly-unemployed people filing claims. The situation is so dire that the Governor of New Jersey mentioned it during a press conference. This has led to a number of articles in the popular press about this situation, some rather sensational: "60 year old programming language prevents people filing for unemployment!" E.g., https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-programmers-new-jersey-trnd/index.html On the other hand, some are rather more measured: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/cobol-programmers-answer-call-unemployment-benefits-systems I suspect the real problem is less "COBOL and mainframes" and more organizational along the lines of lack of investment in training, maintenance and modernization. I can't imagine that bureaucrats are particularly motivated to invest in technology that mostly "just works." But the news coverage has led to a predictable set of rebuttals from the mainframe faithful on places like Twitter; they point out that COBOL has been updated by recent standards in 2002 and 2014 and is being unfairly blamed for the present failures, which arguably have more to do with organizational issues than technology. However, the pendulum seems to have swung too far with their arguments in that they're now asserting that COBOL codebases are uniformly masterworks. I don't buy that. I find all of this interesting. I don't know COBOL, nor all that much about it, save for some generalities about its origin and Grace Hopper's involvement in its creation. However, in the last few days I've read up on it a bit and see very little to recommend it: the type and scoping rules are a mess, things like the 'ALTER' statement and the ability to cascade procedure invocations via the 'THRU' keyword seem like a recipe for spaghetti code, and while they added an object system in 2002, it doesn't seem to integrate with the rest of the language coherently and I don't see it doing anything that can't be done in any other OO language. And of course the syntax is abjectly horrible. All in all, it may not be the cause of the current problems, but I don't know why anyone would be much of a fan of it and unless you're already sitting on a mountain of COBOL code (which, in fairness, many organizations in government, insurance and finance are...) I wouldn't invest in it. I read an estimate somewhere that there are something like 380 billion lines of COBOL out there, and another 5 billion are written annually (mostly by body shops in the BRIC countries?). That's a lot of code; surely not all of it is good. So....What do folks think? Is COBOL being unfairly maligned simply due to age, or is it really a problem? How about continued reliance on IBM mainframes: strategic assets or mistakes? - Dan C. (PS: I did look up the specs for the IBM z15. It's an impressive machine, but without an existing mainframe investment, I wouldn't get one.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From michael at kjorling.se Tue Apr 14 04:09:53 2020 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 18:09:53 +0000 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <71a36ea4-236e-4b87-b973-912491ed2d36@localhost> On 13 Apr 2020 13:59 -0400, from crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross): > I read an estimate somewhere that there are something like 380 billion > lines of COBOL out there, and another 5 billion are written annually > (mostly by body shops in the BRIC countries?). That's a lot of code; surely > not all of it is good. Ars quotes an IBM press release claiming 220 billion LOC "being actively used today", at . -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?” From crossd at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 05:30:09 2020 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 15:30:09 -0400 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: <71a36ea4-236e-4b87-b973-912491ed2d36@localhost> References: <71a36ea4-236e-4b87-b973-912491ed2d36@localhost> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 2:16 PM Michael Kjörling wrote: > On 13 Apr 2020 13:59 -0400, from crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross): > > I read an estimate somewhere that there are something like 380 billion > > lines of COBOL out there, and another 5 billion are written annually > > (mostly by body shops in the BRIC countries?). That's a lot of code; > surely > > not all of it is good. > > Ars quotes an IBM press release claiming 220 billion LOC "being > actively used today", at < > https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/ibm-scrambles-to-find-or-train-more-cobol-programmers-to-help-states/ > >. > Sadly (??) that number seems to come from a 2009 estimate. I'm not sure of the veracity of the 390BLOC number, though. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Tue Apr 14 06:40:53 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 16:40:53 -0400 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dan - I think you hit the problem on the head. Some of us broke into the biz with large IBM Systems. My own first system's programming job was for TSS/360 (written in BAL of course). The reason why this is acute is actually predicted by the late Prof Clay Christensen in his book "*The Innovators **Delima*." During the heady days of IBM mainframes in the late 1960s, Wall street/business computing systems were all custom built. If you walked in the Morgan Stanley, Chase, Citi, much less NYSE there were rooms and rooms of cobol programmers writing custom code. Just for that firm. Nothing was shared, each used his/her pool of programmers to survive and try to get an edge or the others. More importantly, they were all using IBM ISAM databases behind all the Cobol 'business logic.' Hey, life was good. The business boomed. Guess what, government programmers pretty much did the same thing, although they were not competing, they were just trying to build systems to support the different programs they had (collecting taxes, paying benefits, *etc*). What was common in all cases, was that the institution (commercial or government) behind all that programming and system deployment had lots of $s. So IBM, and leaches like Ross Perot's firm (there were many like him - his was just one of the biggest), performed what Christensen calls 'sustaining technology.' They kept making the same things, faster big better, *etc.*; because that's what their customers wanted and were asking to buy. But in the early 1970s four things happened: 1.) Edgar F. Codd, an Oxford-educated mathematician working at the IBM San Jose Research Lab, published a paper showing how information stored in large databases could be accessed without knowing how the information was structured or where it resided in the database - that is, he invented the Relational Model for DBs, 2.) the Super-Mini's like the VAX or the like came on the scene, 3.) Oracle would eventually clone Codd's work and created a cheap DB that ran on #2, and 4.) companies like Oracle, BANN, SAP built >>re-configurable<< applications that worked a lot like the custom ones that had been built by the huge Cobol teams but were good enough for most firms. * i.e*. a general ledger/accounting system, the small banking system. A car dealership or super-market system. In fact, what arose was a legion of folks like the big-8 that would take those systems and set them up for smaller firms. Customize some of the reports, but many customers used the same codes (rinse and repeat...) And something else happened... Oracle did not try to attack IBM head-on. Larry and team followed Christensen's idea of looking for *new customers/a new market*, where what they sold might not be originally quite as sexy as the custom things the big financial folks/government were building for themselves, but they were a load cheaper and were 'good enough' for most smaller firms. The rest, as they say, is history. Eventually, the systems got bigger and bigger, and more capability and the Oracle, SAP, *et al* got better and better and could do more. Eventually, Wall Street started to switch to the new less customized world. And in many places, eventually, the reconfigurable applications for accounting, payroll et al, slowly started to get replaced >>on the commercial side<<. The key point was that Oracle and the commercial applications and database side of the world, disrupted the original mainframe in the financial sector ---> except for one type of customer: Government. There were no new customers for these systems, so governments just kept using the custom stuff they had. They did start to put web style front-ends one them. But what elected official is going to try to get money to replace the current system they have? It works and redo/rewrite/modernization is not cost-effective because there are no economies to scale. So unless the Fed's put together a program for all 50 states (which is what they did for the IRS and the new system is still having issues). Remember, redoing something like that is not going to get you re-elected and it sure is going to take money away from a special project that might. That said, here is a question for you. I suspect you have used something sqlite(3), Berkeley DB or any simple relational DB for something at some point. But did you ever learn how to use a Codisyl/ISAM DB? I bet there really was no reason for you to learn how and frankly it was not likely to be on your system. But take a look --> trying front-ending ISAM style queries from JavaScript. We have a whole set of routines and standards to call SQL -- Cobol calling ISAM is much more ad hoc (IBM called these 'access methods'). The big UNIX idea of everything is file is the complete antithesis of the codasyl. Do you remember what happened during the Obama administration, when they rolled out ACA with most states? The web sites were crashing because the databases couldn't hack it and keep up the queries. The web-front ends scaled, but those back-ends databases were never designed to be accessed in that way. The problem is really not Cobol as much as the design of those systems was all custom and assumes a very structured back-end with structured data. Those systems grew up over time with small incremental changes. Most changes were forced when new legislation came in and new features had to be added. But they stayed as ther were and were patched to keep going. So somewhere, somebody put a pretty front end with the web, but in back office, it's still an old system. Think about, you live in MA. Have you tried to get a new driver's license with the Real-ID from the DMV? Same issue -- great web front end. But the DMV system behind is all is circa late 1960 Cobol/ISAM -- never replaced. It's a nightmare and a lot of it manual. Same with voter registration systems for the towns. A couple of years ago, my sister arranged to get a 9-track (EBCDIC) tape from some of the towns with all voters on it for a story she was writing for the Boston Globe and she needed to do some statistical analysis. Fortunately, I still had a working 9-track and I can deal with almost anything. It was clearly an ISAM database dump. Between dd(1) and a few sed/grep/awk scripts, she was is business. IIRC, I started to try to put it into Berkeley DB, but mostly just converting to an ASCII form tabular form and being able to run grep et al was good enough. She shows her town clerk what she had, and the clerk wanted it. The clerk told my sister that she had been trying for years to get the state to give her some of that data in the form we wanted. She had been told it could not be done etc... The reason is they no longer had anyone that knew anything about the DB. So the problem is in middle and higher management. What Christensen points out, is when you can create a new market, you can change things quickly (disrupt the old market in his terms). But without those market forces, the developers will continue to build you better and better systems that are incremental over the old one. If there is not a new market there to disrupt the old one stays. BTW: In my world, HPC, this is why Fortran is still king for the same reasons, and there it is worse because the math has not changed and we have 50-70 years of datasets that would have to be rechecked and revalidated if the programs changed. Check out: https://www.archer.ac.uk/status/codes/ On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 2:00 PM Dan Cross wrote: > So I imagine that most readers of this list have heard that a number of US > states are actively looking for COBOL programmers. > > If you have not, the background is that, in the US, a number of > unemployment insurance systems have mainframe backends running applications > mostly written in COBOL. Due to the economic downturn as a result of > COVID-19, these systems are being overwhelmed with unprecedented numbers of > newly-unemployed people filing claims. The situation is so dire that the > Governor of New Jersey mentioned it during a press conference. > > This has led to a number of articles in the popular press about this > situation, some rather sensational: "60 year old programming language > prevents people filing for unemployment!" E.g., > https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-programmers-new-jersey-trnd/index.html > > On the other hand, some are rather more measured: > https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/cobol-programmers-answer-call-unemployment-benefits-systems > > I suspect the real problem is less "COBOL and mainframes" and more > organizational along the lines of lack of investment in training, > maintenance and modernization. I can't imagine that bureaucrats are > particularly motivated to invest in technology that mostly "just works." > > But the news coverage has led to a predictable set of rebuttals from the > mainframe faithful on places like Twitter; they point out that COBOL has > been updated by recent standards in 2002 and 2014 and is being unfairly > blamed for the present failures, which arguably have more to do with > organizational issues than technology. However, the pendulum seems to have > swung too far with their arguments in that they're now asserting that COBOL > codebases are uniformly masterworks. I don't buy that. > > I find all of this interesting. I don't know COBOL, nor all that much > about it, save for some generalities about its origin and Grace Hopper's > involvement in its creation. However, in the last few days I've read up on > it a bit and see very little to recommend it: the type and scoping rules > are a mess, things like the 'ALTER' statement and the ability to cascade > procedure invocations via the 'THRU' keyword seem like a recipe for > spaghetti code, and while they added an object system in 2002, it doesn't > seem to integrate with the rest of the language coherently and I don't see > it doing anything that can't be done in any other OO language. And of > course the syntax is abjectly horrible. All in all, it may not be the cause > of the current problems, but I don't know why anyone would be much of a fan > of it and unless you're already sitting on a mountain of COBOL code (which, > in fairness, many organizations in government, insurance and finance > are...) I wouldn't invest in it. > > I read an estimate somewhere that there are something like 380 billion > lines of COBOL out there, and another 5 billion are written annually > (mostly by body shops in the BRIC countries?). That's a lot of code; surely > not all of it is good. > > So....What do folks think? Is COBOL being unfairly maligned simply due to > age, or is it really a problem? How about continued reliance on IBM > mainframes: strategic assets or mistakes? > > - Dan C. > > (PS: I did look up the specs for the IBM z15. It's an impressive machine, > but without an existing mainframe investment, I wouldn't get one.) > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Tue Apr 14 07:27:26 2020 From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 23:27:26 +0200 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Tue Apr 14 08:09:21 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 08:09:21 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, Paul Guertin wrote: > I would love to see a study correlating the serif length on 1 with both > the age of the writer and the place he or she learned to write. Most > Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some of them write normal > serifs, others go full CVS receipt and end up with serifs longer than > the character they're seriffing. I (English-born, Aussie-bred) use s short serif and underline on the "1". Hmmm... My MacBook puts a dot in the middle of the "0" (zero) and serifs/underlines the "1" too. I make spaces visible with a sort of a musical "flat" symbol but with a short bar through it, write a tab as a short right arrow, and for me it's always ^C etc (which is how they're echoed). Part of my background is formal message-passing in emergency communications, whereby the written message *must* be correct as that will what will be sent (even spelling and grammatical errors, which used to irritate me although I am allowed to query the author). Ahhh... The Tower of Babel when it comes to something that must by definition be precise :-) -- Dave (VK2KFU) From krewat at kilonet.net Tue Apr 14 08:12:45 2020 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 18:12:45 -0400 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Since it's COFF, I replaced to the list. On 4/13/2020 1:35 PM, Paul Guertin wrote: > Dixit Nemo (2020-04-13 9:23 a.m.): >>   European writing (along with exaggerated serifs on Wons). > > I would love to see a study correlating the serif length on 1 > with both the age of the writer and the place he or she learned > to write. Most Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some > of them write normal serifs, others go full CVS receipt and > end up with serifs longer than the character they're seriffing. 20 years from now, no one will get the CVS reference without searching for it :) ak From krewat at kilonet.net Tue Apr 14 08:22:29 2020 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 18:22:29 -0400 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: <71a36ea4-236e-4b87-b973-912491ed2d36@localhost> References: <71a36ea4-236e-4b87-b973-912491ed2d36@localhost> Message-ID: <8defb817-e712-006f-e885-fcd8df059e08@kilonet.net> I touch something everyday at work that uses COBOL for a variety of reasons and purposes... PeopleSoft. Most college Financial Aid code is provided by the Federal Gov't, which is, of course, in COBOL. But there are a variety of other processes that are written in COBOL even though there is an alternative. ak From dave at horsfall.org Tue Apr 14 08:24:36 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 08:24:36 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, Dan Cross wrote: > So I imagine that most readers of this list have heard that a number of > US states are actively looking for COBOL programmers. I have no plans to move to the US :-) To this day "ADD A TO B GIVING C COMPUTATIONAL ROUNDED" still leaves me cold. And it's been said that one of the reasons for COBOL was that dumb-as-whatever bosses could see what their programmers were writing... Their job is to manage, not to spy. Heck, they measured productivity by lines of code per day; you want lots of lines? Sure, I can do that! -- Dave From lm at mcvoy.com Tue Apr 14 08:28:28 2020 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 15:28:28 -0700 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20200413222828.GQ8544@mcvoy.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 08:24:36AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, Dan Cross wrote: > > >So I imagine that most readers of this list have heard that a number of US > >states are actively looking for COBOL programmers. > > I have no plans to move to the US :-) Those of us here are rethinking our choices, it's a shit show. From dave at horsfall.org Tue Apr 14 09:21:51 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 09:21:51 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, Arthur Krewat wrote: > 20 years from now, no one will get the CVS reference without searching > for it :) And here I was wondering what "Concurrent Versions System" had to do with it... The kindest thing that I could say about SCCS was that it solved the problem at the time, and I was glad when RCS came along; I don't like GIT. -- Dave, with a strong interest in BitKeeper From clemc at ccc.com Tue Apr 14 09:58:43 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 19:58:43 -0400 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 6:24 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > And it's been said that one of the reasons for COBOL was that > dumb-as-whatever bosses could see what their programmers were writing... > Their job is to manage, not to spy. Heck, they measured productivity by > lines of code per day; you want lots of lines? Sure, I can do that! > https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grog at lemis.com Tue Apr 14 10:12:19 2020 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 10:12:19 +1000 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20200414001219.GA57134@eureka.lemis.com> On Monday, 13 April 2020 at 19:01:13 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order > to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed > your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over > thine head... > > These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an > eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. > > What're other bods' experiences? It's funny that nobody seems to have differentiated these usages. I've seen at least three: 1. "European" characters: 1 with a serif (is that really the correct term?), 7 with a stroke, Z also with a stroke. Also small u with a stroke above it in German, left over from the days („Sütterlinschrift“) when this was the only distinction between written u and n. None of these had anything to do with computers. 2. The distinction between O and 0. Put a cross through the 0 and leave the O as it was. In my experience, this too predated computers: I first learnt it round 1963 when trying to become a radio amateur, much to the disgust of my maths teacher, who also didn't like the hooked 1s and the crossed 7s. 3. The distinction between O and 0. The same as before, almost: put a cross through the O and leave the 0 normal. This must be a US usage, since O and Ø are both valid (and different) letters in some Nordic languages. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 12:57:46 2020 From: paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com (Paul Palmer) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 21:57:46 -0500 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Did anyone ever find a font with these characters? Preferably one I can use with TeX. Thanks On Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:01 AM Dave Horsfall Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned > supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find > the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars > and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the > hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those > green sheets. > > In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order > to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed > your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over > thine head... > > These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an > eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. > > What're other bods' experiences? > > [*] > Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off at > Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. > > -- Dave, bored at home > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wobblygong at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 18:18:39 2020 From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 20:18:39 +1200 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I have on the odd occasion scratched my head over COBOL. It's a denary/decimal instead of a binary, octal or hexidecimal number system, and it's a real number system instead of integer and floating point. That should indicate just who its target is. It's also wordy. I think it could do with pruning. The OpenCOBOL Programmers Guide is perhaps the easiest way to gain an understanding of it. As far as the back-end being ISAM or VSAM - iterations of the same (indexed/virtual) sequential access method - someone could make a fortune writing a utility to transfer the databases over to a relational database so that the sequential access would no longer be a bottleneck. It would be a pain of course unless you knew mainframes, access methods and relational databases, but it would be doable. My 0.02c worth. (Don't spend it all at once. :) Wesley Parish On 4/14/20, Dan Cross wrote: > So I imagine that most readers of this list have heard that a number of US > states are actively looking for COBOL programmers. > > If you have not, the background is that, in the US, a number of > unemployment insurance systems have mainframe backends running applications > mostly written in COBOL. Due to the economic downturn as a result of > COVID-19, these systems are being overwhelmed with unprecedented numbers of > newly-unemployed people filing claims. The situation is so dire that the > Governor of New Jersey mentioned it during a press conference. > > This has led to a number of articles in the popular press about this > situation, some rather sensational: "60 year old programming language > prevents people filing for unemployment!" E.g., > https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-programmers-new-jersey-trnd/index.html > > On the other hand, some are rather more measured: > https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/cobol-programmers-answer-call-unemployment-benefits-systems > > I suspect the real problem is less "COBOL and mainframes" and more > organizational along the lines of lack of investment in training, > maintenance and modernization. I can't imagine that bureaucrats are > particularly motivated to invest in technology that mostly "just works." > > But the news coverage has led to a predictable set of rebuttals from the > mainframe faithful on places like Twitter; they point out that COBOL has > been updated by recent standards in 2002 and 2014 and is being unfairly > blamed for the present failures, which arguably have more to do with > organizational issues than technology. However, the pendulum seems to have > swung too far with their arguments in that they're now asserting that COBOL > codebases are uniformly masterworks. I don't buy that. > > I find all of this interesting. I don't know COBOL, nor all that much about > it, save for some generalities about its origin and Grace Hopper's > involvement in its creation. However, in the last few days I've read up on > it a bit and see very little to recommend it: the type and scoping rules > are a mess, things like the 'ALTER' statement and the ability to cascade > procedure invocations via the 'THRU' keyword seem like a recipe for > spaghetti code, and while they added an object system in 2002, it doesn't > seem to integrate with the rest of the language coherently and I don't see > it doing anything that can't be done in any other OO language. And of > course the syntax is abjectly horrible. All in all, it may not be the cause > of the current problems, but I don't know why anyone would be much of a fan > of it and unless you're already sitting on a mountain of COBOL code (which, > in fairness, many organizations in government, insurance and finance > are...) I wouldn't invest in it. > > I read an estimate somewhere that there are something like 380 billion > lines of COBOL out there, and another 5 billion are written annually > (mostly by body shops in the BRIC countries?). That's a lot of code; surely > not all of it is good. > > So....What do folks think? Is COBOL being unfairly maligned simply due to > age, or is it really a problem? How about continued reliance on IBM > mainframes: strategic assets or mistakes? > > - Dan C. > > (PS: I did look up the specs for the IBM z15. It's an impressive machine, > but without an existing mainframe investment, I wouldn't get one.) > From skogtun at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 19:24:17 2020 From: skogtun at gmail.com (Harald Arnesen) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 11:24:17 +0200 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8884c03d-acd0-14bd-ca60-ec269e3a3812@gmail.com> Dave Horsfall [14.04.2020 00:24]: > I have no plans to move to the US :-) To this day "ADD A TO B GIVING C > COMPUTATIONAL ROUNDED" still leaves me cold. No one I know (I programmed COBOL at a couple of jobs in the 80s) ever actually wrote that in COBOL. "COMPUTE C = A + B" is valid, and the "COMPUTATIONAL ROUNDED" is handled by USAGE and PICTURE clauses in the DATA DIVISION. I still dabble with GNU Cobol now and then. -- Hilsen Harald From dave at horsfall.org Tue Apr 14 20:06:19 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 20:06:19 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: <8884c03d-acd0-14bd-ca60-ec269e3a3812@gmail.com> References: <8884c03d-acd0-14bd-ca60-ec269e3a3812@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 14 Apr 2020, Harald Arnesen wrote: >> I have no plans to move to the US :-) To this day "ADD A TO B GIVING C >> COMPUTATIONAL ROUNDED" still leaves me cold. > > No one I know (I programmed COBOL at a couple of jobs in the 80s) ever > actually wrote that in COBOL. "COMPUTE C = A + B" is valid, and the > "COMPUTATIONAL ROUNDED" is handled by USAGE and PICTURE clauses in the > DATA DIVISION. 'Twas a joke circulating amongst the Computer Science lecturers at the time (70s and all that); in fact, I think I first heard it from John Lions himself... > I still dabble with GNU Cobol now and then. I am reminded of the following Buddhist koan: And the Novice asked the Master: Novice: Master, does EMACS have the Buddha nature? Master: Well, I don't see why not; it bloody well has everything else in it. I gots lots of those things :-) -- Dave From ama at ugr.es Tue Apr 14 20:12:48 2020 From: ama at ugr.es (Angel M Alganza) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 12:12:48 +0200 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo Message-ID: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> Hello: Im apologize for the OT but Im desperately looking for the answer to a question regarding BitKeeper and, since I heard about its vitues and also about it becoming open source in this list, I thought you guys wouldn't mind helping me find the answer to my problem. I've been using Git for some time now, but after hearing here about BK, Im trying it out to see if I can change to it. At the moment I'm quite happy with it and I very much like it's smaller than Git. In Git I use a remote SSH "original" repo instead of a public (HTTP) service, since I want to have distributed copies (several workstations and laptops) and a "non interactive" copy on a server of mine. I'm not sure I am making a lot of sense, since I'm not very expert on Git either (I just use a few basic functions) and English isn't my first language. What I actually need/want is to create a remote SSH repo from my local (working) repo. I haven't found how to do that neither in the documentation nor the Users Forum. Alas I havent found a mailing list to subscribe to and ask for help. That's why I'm asking you guys for help. Again sorry for the OT and thank you so much for reading until here. :) Cheers, Ángel From dfawcus+lists-coff at employees.org Tue Apr 14 23:34:03 2020 From: dfawcus+lists-coff at employees.org (Derek Fawcus) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 14:34:03 +0100 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20200414133403.GB46873@clarinet.employees.org> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 08:09:21AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, Paul Guertin wrote: > > > I would love to see a study correlating the serif length on 1 with both > > the age of the writer and the place he or she learned to write. Most > > Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some of them write normal > > serifs, others go full CVS receipt and end up with serifs longer than > > the character they're seriffing. I (raised in England), in my early 50s: draw a 1 as simply a vertical stroke, no serifs draw a 7 without any bar, but did see that being used by some while in middle school draw an 4 'open', rather than 'closed' draw 0 variably depending upon context A 0 usually without slash, occasionaly with a slash when writing code or it would otherwise be ambiguous (licence codes, etc). We tended to view the stroked 7 as a Continental practice, but some people adopted it. As to your question about spaces, I do it as Paul described - a short of shallow bucket. > I (English-born, Aussie-bred) use s short serif and underline on the "1". Aha - so you were pulling our legs with your phrasing of the subject. DF From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Apr 15 00:33:14 2020 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 07:33:14 -0700 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> Message-ID: <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 12:12:48PM +0200, Angel M Alganza wrote: > What I actually need/want is to create a remote SSH repo from my local > (working) repo. I haven't found how to do that neither in the > documentation nor the Users Forum. Alas I havent found a mailing list to > subscribe to and ask for help. That's why I'm asking you guys for help. Hi, I'm the BitKeeper guy, so asking here or me is fine. dev at bitmover.com also works. Does bk help url not answer your question? I think you can do bk clone local_repo ssh:/// and maybe cd local_repo bk parent ssh:/// but that depends on how you want things to flow by default. I'm happy to answer questions here, seems like Dave is looking at BK too, but I'm also happy to not spam the list and take it offline. --lm From gdmr at inf.ed.ac.uk Wed Apr 15 00:23:14 2020 From: gdmr at inf.ed.ac.uk (George Ross) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 15:23:14 +0100 Subject: [COFF] On having a slash In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 14 Apr 2020 14:34:03 +0100." <20200414133403.GB46873@clarinet.employees.org> Message-ID: <202004141423.03EENEqq023039@maysl7.inf.ed.ac.uk> > > the age of the writer and the place he or she learned to write. Most > > Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some of them write normal > > serifs, others go full CVS receipt and end up with serifs longer than > > the character they're seriffing. > > I (raised in England), in my early 50s: > draw a 1 as simply a vertical stroke, no serifs > draw a 7 without any bar, but did see that being used by some while in > middle school I (a Scot) draw a 1 with a serif and a 7 with a bar (and a Z with a bar) because it was necessary for university maths not to mix up |, 1, 7, 2 and Z, and the habit has just stuck. Mathematicians, of course, have lots of other ways to decorate their fonts. And I write zero with a slash and O without when clarity requires it (e.g. copying down serial numbers) and sometimes at other "computing" times too, though not consistently, because it helped the card-punch-operator. I did have a summer job as a student at a place which did the 0 and O the other way round, which caused a bit of confusion at first. I don't know why, because it wasn't the kind of place which would have been contrary about something like that. Given that I got the job because the person I was working for didn't understand IMPLICIT INTEGER and couldn't see why his FORTRAN wasn't giving him the results he expected, my guess is that it was just a case of someone hearing about a good idea and just implementing it in their own way. -- George D M Ross MSc PhD CEng MBCS CITP University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics, Appleton Tower, 11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH8 9LE Mail: gdmr at inf.ed.ac.uk Voice: 0131 650 5147 PGP: 1024D/AD758CC5 B91E D430 1E0D 5883 EF6A 426C B676 5C2B AD75 8CC5 The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. From cym224 at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 02:11:55 2020 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 12:11:55 -0400 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 14/04/2020, Wesley Parish wrote (in part): > It's also wordy. I think it could do with pruning. Some years ago, a friend wrote a translator for an internal more laconic language that would spit out Cobol. The company was quite happy with it. N. From ama at ugr.es Wed Apr 15 07:27:48 2020 From: ama at ugr.es (Angel M Alganza) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 23:27:48 +0200 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> Hello Larry, On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 07:33:14AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: > Does > > bk help url > > not answer your question? I think you can do It does, now that I know what to look for. Thank you so much for your help here and by your direct email (I replied to your email address instead to the list address before, as I intended). Cheers, Ángel From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Apr 15 07:46:55 2020 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 14:46:55 -0700 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> Message-ID: <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 11:27:48PM +0200, Angel M Alganza wrote: > Hello Larry, > > On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 07:33:14AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: > > >Does > > > > bk help url > > > >not answer your question? I think you can do > > It does, now that I know what to look for. Thank you so much for your > help here and by your direct email (I replied to your email address > instead to the list address before, as I intended). Happy to help. bk helptool is sort of useful because it has categories. From dave at horsfall.org Wed Apr 15 09:51:25 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 09:51:25 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 14 Apr 2020, Larry McVoy wrote: > bk helptool > > is sort of useful because it has categories. Wow! In a previous life we had a doc tool something like that. -- Dave From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Apr 15 09:55:44 2020 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 16:55:44 -0700 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20200414235544.GA16034@mcvoy.com> On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 09:51:25AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Tue, 14 Apr 2020, Larry McVoy wrote: > > >bk helptool > > > >is sort of useful because it has categories. > > Wow! In a previous life we had a doc tool something like that. It's fairly generic, you can stick any set of man pages in there. Kinda point and clicky but it has served us well. It's sorta like a web browser, you can click on the stuff that look like links. From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Apr 15 10:18:41 2020 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 17:18:41 -0700 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <20200414235544.GA16034@mcvoy.com> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414235544.GA16034@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20200415001841.GB16034@mcvoy.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 04:55:44PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 09:51:25AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > On Tue, 14 Apr 2020, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > >bk helptool > > > > > >is sort of useful because it has categories. > > > > Wow! In a previous life we had a doc tool something like that. > > It's fairly generic, you can stick any set of man pages in there. > Kinda point and clicky but it has served us well. It's sorta like > a web browser, you can click on the stuff that look like links. And all open source, it's just a tcl/tk app. So if someone could get use out of it I can tease it loose from the BK source tree. From athornton at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 10:30:08 2020 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 17:30:08 -0700 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <20200415001841.GB16034@mcvoy.com> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414235544.GA16034@mcvoy.com> <20200415001841.GB16034@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <0D83D61F-2115-48BD-AA50-44DF2E874831@gmail.com> > On Apr 14, 2020, at 5:18 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > And all open source, it's just a tcl/tk app. So if someone could > get use out of it I can tease it loose from the BK source tree. I liked tk all right. tcl on the other hand…it's like shell but much more hateful. Like shell if the only thing you could use was nested evals. Perl/tk on the other hand, I liked a great deal. Adam From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Apr 15 10:34:10 2020 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 17:34:10 -0700 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <0D83D61F-2115-48BD-AA50-44DF2E874831@gmail.com> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414235544.GA16034@mcvoy.com> <20200415001841.GB16034@mcvoy.com> <0D83D61F-2115-48BD-AA50-44DF2E874831@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20200415003410.GD16034@mcvoy.com> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 05:30:08PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: > > > > On Apr 14, 2020, at 5:18 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > And all open source, it's just a tcl/tk app. So if someone could > > get use out of it I can tease it loose from the BK source tree. > > I liked tk all right. > > tcl on the other hand???it's like shell but much more hateful. Like shell if the only thing you could use was nested evals. You and I would get along great. I *hate* tcl, love tk. I hate tcl so much that I paid some guys to create a C-like language that compiles down to tcl byte codes. It is quite pleasant IMHO, has some perl stuff too. Check it out at http://little-lang.org From ama at ugr.es Wed Apr 15 10:53:46 2020 From: ama at ugr.es (Angel M Alganza) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 02:53:46 +0200 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <20200415001841.GB16034@mcvoy.com> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414235544.GA16034@mcvoy.com> <20200415001841.GB16034@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20200415005346.fcsmro3rcn7xkpmr@zombi.ugr.es> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 05:18:41PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: >> > >bk helptool >> > > >> > >is sort of useful because it has categories. Very much so. >> It's sorta like a web browser, you can click on the stuff that look >> like links. But without a web browser or an internet connection, which is great. >And all open source, it's just a tcl/tk app. So if someone could >get use out of it I can tease it loose from the BK source tree. That might be useful for some people who would read on a graphical interface rather than the cli. I prefer the cli so, I've copied over the man pages to /usr/local/man/, which interface Im much more confortable (mainly pagination keys) with than TK or bk help. I'm really liking BitKeeper. I'm so glad I decided to ask my original question to you guys (been hesitating for a few days). Cheers, Ángel From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Apr 15 11:05:56 2020 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 18:05:56 -0700 Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <20200415005346.fcsmro3rcn7xkpmr@zombi.ugr.es> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414235544.GA16034@mcvoy.com> <20200415001841.GB16034@mcvoy.com> <20200415005346.fcsmro3rcn7xkpmr@zombi.ugr.es> Message-ID: <20200415010556.GE16034@mcvoy.com> > I'm really liking BitKeeper. I'm so glad I decided to ask my original > question to you guys (been hesitating for a few days). I'm a kernel guy first, got sucked into source management because they all sucked. BitKeeper is the first distributed source management system, Git and Hg copied the ideas from BK (poorly). BK is what you get when you put a systems guy on source management. I built a solid team of A level players and we went to town. There is some cool systems shit in BK, be happy to talk about it if it is not boring people. From dave at horsfall.org Wed Apr 15 14:24:00 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 14:24:00 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] OT BitKeeper: Creating a remote SSH repo In-Reply-To: <20200415003410.GD16034@mcvoy.com> References: <20200414101248.lfszkq62r3fmh5jp@morgan.ugr.es> <20200414143314.GC8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414212716.jh6hjml6ba5ijcci@zombi.ugr.es> <20200414214655.GL8544@mcvoy.com> <20200414235544.GA16034@mcvoy.com> <20200415001841.GB16034@mcvoy.com> <0D83D61F-2115-48BD-AA50-44DF2E874831@gmail.com> <20200415003410.GD16034@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 14 Apr 2020, Larry McVoy wrote: > You and I would get along great. I *hate* tcl, love tk. I hate tcl so > much that I paid some guys to create a C-like language that compiles > down to tcl byte codes. It is quite pleasant IMHO, has some perl stuff > too. Woo-hoo! I hate TCL but love Perl/Tk and am using it for a simple Gooey front-end for some scripts that I have. I mean, about a page to write a simple "Hello, world" in X11? That BTW is my benchmark for any language; not only does it demonstrate its complexity but also its fundamental structure, and I'm very much a learn-by-example person (it's something weird in my brain that I can pick up a new language just by seeing a few examples of it). Number of programming languages I've used over 50 years: aneurin% wc -l ~/languages 48 /home/dave/languages And that's counting all assembly languages as one, etc; 360, PDP-8, PDP-11, Z-80, VAX, 2650, Intel... Currently looking at ARM for something or other. I collect programming languages like some people collect stamps. I was also pretty good at French in school :-) -- Dave From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Wed Apr 15 16:58:57 2020 From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 08:58:57 +0200 Subject: [COFF] COBOL. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >I have on the odd occasion scratched my head over COBOL. It's a denary/decimal instead of a binary, octal or hexidecimal number system, and it's a real number system instead of integer and floating point. That should indicate just who its target is.< that was quite common in mainframe environments, of course alien to minis and micros. From athornton at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 12:51:22 2020 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2020 19:51:22 -0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Plan 9 from outer space ? In-Reply-To: References: <20200418172018.AE33F2CF6BF9@macaroni.inf.ed.ac.uk> <20200418172337.GA22829@vagabond> Message-ID: <2F517789-DDA2-4475-90DD-E0D8B946ED57@gmail.com> So it could be the lack of televised sports getting to me in these shelter-in-place days, but, I mean, sure, I guess I’ll throw in some bucks for a pay-per-view of a Pike/Thompson cage match. FIGHT! Followups set. > On Apr 18, 2020, at 6:28 PM, Rob Pike wrote: > It wasn't my intention. > On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 11:12 AM Ken Thompson wrote: >> >> you shouldn't have shut down this discussion. >> On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 3:27 PM Rob Pike wrote: >>> ``because''. From dave at horsfall.org Sun Apr 19 14:34:16 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 14:34:16 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Plan 9 from outer space ? In-Reply-To: <2F517789-DDA2-4475-90DD-E0D8B946ED57@gmail.com> References: <20200418172018.AE33F2CF6BF9@macaroni.inf.ed.ac.uk> <20200418172337.GA22829@vagabond> <2F517789-DDA2-4475-90DD-E0D8B946ED57@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 18 Apr 2020, Adam Thornton wrote: > So it could be the lack of televised sports getting to me in these > shelter-in-place days, but, I mean, sure, I guess I’ll throw in some > bucks for a pay-per-view of a Pike/Thompson cage match. FIGHT! I'll put my money on Ken; going by the photos he's bigger and uglier... -- Dave From grog at lemis.com Sun Apr 19 15:20:23 2020 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 15:20:23 +1000 Subject: [COFF] =?iso-8859-1?q?=5BTUHS=5D_=227th_Edition_UNIX_TM=3F=3F_Su?= =?iso-8859-1?q?mmary=22_=3D=3E_=22=E2=3F=3F7th_Edition_UNIX_=E2=3F=3F_Sum?= =?iso-8859-1?q?mary=E2_=3D=3E_=E2=3F=3F=3F=3F=3F7th_Edition_UNIX_=E2=3F?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=3F=3F=3F=3F=3F_Summary=E2=3F=3F=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: <0A51EA96-82C0-4A6E-AF30-1DFA31BD476B@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20200419052023.GB76123@eureka.lemis.com> [redirecting to COFF] On Wednesday, 15 April 2020 at 18:19:57 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Wed, 15 Apr 2020, Don Hopkins wrote: > >> I love how in a discussion of how difficult it was to publish a book on >> Unix with the correct punctuation characters 42 years ago, we still >> can???t even quote the title of the book in a discussion about Unix >> without the punctuation characters degrading and mutating each round >> trip. > > Well, I'm not the one here using Windoze... Arguably Microsoft does it better than Unix. Most of the issues are related to the character encoding. And as Don's headers say: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.3608.60.0.2.5) I agree with Don. I use mutt, which has many advantages, but sane character encoding isn't one of them. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: