[TUHS] MS-DOS

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Norman Wilson]

I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
would give an Englishman a stroke.

If that's too oblique for some of you, I can't help.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Steve Nickolas]

On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Norman Wilson wrote:

> I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
> would give an Englishman a stroke.
>
> If that's too oblique for some of you, I can't help.
>
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON
>

I think the proper term is "Virgule" anyway. ;)

-uso.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Random832]

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016, at 21:13, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> I think the proper term is "Virgule" anyway. ;)

Not "Solidus"? (Along with its counterpart, the reverse solidus)

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[scj]

> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Norman Wilson wrote:
>
>> I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
>> would give an Englishman a stroke.
>>
>> If that's too oblique for some of you, I can't help.
>>
>> Norman Wilson
>> Toronto ON
>>
>
> I think the proper term is "Virgule" anyway. ;)
>
> -uso.
>

AT&T's original term for the 12th key on your phone was 'Octothorpe'.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/octothorpe
It pretty quickly became 'pound', but for anybody under the age of 35 it's
now 'hashtag'  (much to the dismay of music teachers...)

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Friday,  1 July 2016 at 21:13:00 -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Norman Wilson wrote:
>
>> I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
>> would give an Englishman a stroke.
>>
>> If that's too oblique for some of you, I can't help.
>
> I think the proper term is "Virgule" anyway. ;)

For some definition of "proper".  But it's doubly ambiguous: it's the
French word for comma, and OED states:

   A thin sloping or upright line (/, |) occurring in mediæval MSS. as
   a mark for the cæsura or as a punctuation-mark (frequently with the
   same value as the modern comma).

In modern context, it might apply equally to \\.
Clearly that has even more capacity to confuse.

Greg
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[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Nemo]

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On 7 July 2016 at 01:02, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> On Friday,  1 July 2016 at 21:13:00 -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote:
>> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Norman Wilson wrote:
>>
>>> I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
>>> would give an Englishman a stroke.
>>>
>>> If that's too oblique for some of you, I can't help.
>>
>> I think the proper term is "Virgule" anyway. ;)
>
> For some definition of "proper".  But it's doubly ambiguous: it's the
> French word for comma, and OED states:
>
>    A thin sloping or upright line (/, |) occurring in mediæval MSS. as
>    a mark for the cæsura or as a punctuation-mark (frequently with the
>    same value as the modern comma).

On the other hand, the OED has the following.

slash 5. A thin sloping line, thus /

solidus 2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6,
in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a
shilling-mark.

I would argue "solidus" is closer.

N.

>
> In modern context, it might apply equally to \\.
> Clearly that has even more capacity to confuse.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at FreeBSD.org 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

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[John Cowan]

Nemo scripsit:

> I would argue "solidus" is closer.

A solid argument, worth at least a shilling.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
It's like if you meet an really old, really rich guy covered in liver
spots and breathing with an oxygen tank, and you say, "I want to be
rich, too, so I'm going to start walking with a cane and I'm going to
act crotchety and I'm going to get liver disease. --Wil Shipley

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

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Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
 |On 7 July 2016 at 01:02, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
 |> On Friday,  1 July 2016 at 21:13:00 -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote:
 |>> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Norman Wilson wrote:
 |>>
 |>>> I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
 |>>> would give an Englishman a stroke.
 |>>>
 |>>> If that's too oblique for some of you, I can't help.
 |>>
 |>> I think the proper term is "Virgule" anyway. ;)
 |>
 |> For some definition of "proper".  But it's doubly ambiguous: it's the
 |> French word for comma, and OED states:
 |>
 |>    A thin sloping or upright line (/, |) occurring in mediæval MSS. as
 |>    a mark for the cæsura or as a punctuation-mark (frequently with the
 |>    same value as the modern comma).
 |
 |On the other hand, the OED has the following.
 |
 |slash 5. A thin sloping line, thus /
 |
 |solidus 2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6,
 |in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a
 |shilling-mark.
 |
 |I would argue "solidus" is closer.

SOLIDUS is the Unicode name, too, as is REVERSE SOLIDUS, giving
SLASH and BACKSLASH as secondaries.
To the contrary, the POSIX standard, says "Slash Character
(<slash>)" and then states "also known as solidus" in the
description, and ditto does so for reverse solidus.  Maybe this
will change over time to better reflect ISO 10646.

--steffen

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Thursday,  7 July 2016 at 16:18:41 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7 July 2016 at 01:02, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>>> On Friday,  1 July 2016 at 21:13:00 -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Norman Wilson wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
>>>>> would give an Englishman a stroke.
>>>>>
>>>>> If that's too oblique for some of you, I can't help.
>>>>
>>>> I think the proper term is "Virgule" anyway. ;)
>>>
>>> For some definition of "proper".  But it's doubly ambiguous: it's the
>>> French word for comma, and OED states:
>>>
>>>    A thin sloping or upright line (/, |) occurring in mediæval MSS. as
>>>    a mark for the cæsura or as a punctuation-mark (frequently with the
>>>    same value as the modern comma).
>>
>> On the other hand, the OED has the following.
>>
>> slash 5. A thin sloping line, thus /
>>
>> solidus 2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6,
>> in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a
>> shilling-mark.

This was, of course, also the origin of the word "shilling".  The OED
entry is interesting.

>> I would argue "solidus" is closer.
>
> SOLIDUS is the Unicode name, too, as is REVERSE SOLIDUS, giving
> SLASH and BACKSLASH as secondaries.

Finally we have clarity!  From now on it's only (without shouting)
solidus and reverse solidus.  No confusion any more, at least not for
those in the know.

Greg
--
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[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[scj]

>
>>> I would argue "solidus" is closer.
>>
>> SOLIDUS is the Unicode name, too, as is REVERSE SOLIDUS, giving
>> SLASH and BACKSLASH as secondaries.
>
> Finally we have clarity!  From now on it's only (without shouting)
> solidus and reverse solidus.  No confusion any more, at least not for
> those in the know.
>
> Greg
> --

What fun!  Having disposed of # and / and \, anybody want to find other
obscure names for the other operators?   Soon we could be as obscure as
Algol 68!

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Thursday,  7 July 2016 at 22:40:47 -0700, scj at yaccman.com wrote:
>
>>
>>>> I would argue "solidus" is closer.
>>>
>>> SOLIDUS is the Unicode name, too, as is REVERSE SOLIDUS, giving
>>> SLASH and BACKSLASH as secondaries.
>>
>> Finally we have clarity!  From now on it's only (without shouting)
>> solidus and reverse solidus.  No confusion any more, at least not for
>> those in the know.
>
> What fun!  Having disposed of # and / and \, anybody want to find
> other obscure names for the other operators?  Soon we could be as
> obscure as Algol 68!

That takes real talent.

You've made me locate my Report (not Revised Report).  It's
surprisingly dog-eared.  I'll go through it and see what I can find,
but for the moment section 2.2 seems appropriate.

Greg
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[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

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Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
 |On Thursday,  7 July 2016 at 16:18:41 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |> Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
 |>> On 7 July 2016 at 01:02, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
 |>>> On Friday,  1 July 2016 at 21:13:00 -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote:
 |>>>> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Norman Wilson wrote:
 |>>>>
 |>>>>> I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
 |>>>>> would give an Englishman a stroke.

 |>> On the other hand, the OED has the following.
 |>>
 |>> slash 5. A thin sloping line, thus /
 |>>
 |>> solidus 2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6,
 |>> in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a
 |>> shilling-mark.

 |>> I would argue "solidus" is closer.
 |>
 |> SOLIDUS is the Unicode name, too, as is REVERSE SOLIDUS, giving
 |> SLASH and BACKSLASH as secondaries.
 |
 |Finally we have clarity!  From now on it's only (without shouting)

Copied and pasted from UnicodeData.txt.

 |solidus and reverse solidus.  No confusion any more, at least not for
 |those in the know.

Maybe it helps that the German «Schrägstrich» will desert into
Slash («Herkunft: englisch slash, eigentlich = (harter, kurzer)
Schlag, Hieb, laut- und bewegungsnachahmend oder zu altfranzösisch
esclachier = (zer)teilen») and that a furtherly described
Schrägstrich will wind up in «Backslash» («Herkunft: englisch
backslash, aus: back = zurück und slash = Hieb, Schnitt»)

It gives me cause for concern that we replace a civil word like
«Schrägstrich» ("oblique bar") with something aggressive and
dismembering that slash seems to represent.  That may be a reason
for Linguists to promote solidus and ban the other words into the
commentary, one might think.

...and that actually makes me wonder why the engineers that
created what became POSIX preferred slash instead -- i hope it is
not the proud of high skills in using (maybe light) sabers that
some people of the engineer community seem to foster.  But it
could be the sober truth.  Or, it could be a bug caused by
inconsideration.  And that seems very likely now.

--steffen

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Friday,  8 July 2016 at 13:09:12 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>> On Thursday,  7 July 2016 at 16:18:41 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
>>> Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I would argue "solidus" is closer.
>>>
>>> SOLIDUS is the Unicode name, too, as is REVERSE SOLIDUS, giving
>>> SLASH and BACKSLASH as secondaries.
>>
>> Finally we have clarity!  From now on it's only (without shouting)
>> solidus and reverse solidus.  No confusion any more, at least not
>> for those in the know.
>
> Maybe it helps that the German «Schrägstrich» will desert into Slash
> («Herkunft: englisch slash, eigentlich???= (harter, kurzer) Schlag,
> Hieb, laut- und bewegungsnachahmend oder zu altfranzösisch
> esclachier???= (zer)teilen»

You don't quote your source, but the blue Duden (paraphrased for
non-German speakers) makes it clear that "Strich" comes from an Ablaut
form of "streichen", itself derived from the root "Strahl", originally
meaning "arrow".  So ultimately, it seems, you have the choice of
being struck or shot.

Greg
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[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

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Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
 |On Friday,  8 July 2016 at 13:09:12 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |> Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
 |>> On Thursday,  7 July 2016 at 16:18:41 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |>>> Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
 |>>>> I would argue "solidus" is closer.
 |>>>
 |>>> SOLIDUS is the Unicode name, too, as is REVERSE SOLIDUS, giving
 |>>> SLASH and BACKSLASH as secondaries.
 |>>
 |>> Finally we have clarity!  From now on it's only (without shouting)
 |>> solidus and reverse solidus.  No confusion any more, at least not
 |>> for those in the know.
 |>
 |> Maybe it helps that the German «Schrägstrich» will desert into Slash
 |> («Herkunft: englisch slash, eigentlich???= (harter, kurzer) Schlag,
 |> Hieb, laut- und bewegungsnachahmend oder zu altfranzösisch
 |> esclachier???= (zer)teilen»
 |
 |You don't quote your source, but the blue Duden (paraphrased for
 |non-German speakers) makes it clear that "Strich" comes from an Ablaut
 |form of "streichen", itself derived from the root "Strahl", originally
 |meaning "arrow".  So ultimately, it seems, you have the choice of
 |being struck or shot.

Haha, very nice.  I wouldn't sign the "originally meaning" --
without knowing it seems more likely that this visualization of an
"arrow"-in-the-flight was itself based on the "beam"s of sunlight
(that fall through holes in a cloudy sky).  Nature-induced
visualizations are pretty common me thinks; e.g., Fritz Walter
describes a football goal of the young Uwe Seeler during world
championship 1958 with "Ein Strich.  Ein Blitz." ("A line/stroke.
A Lightning.").

I would really think that "Strich" (line, dash, stroke) of
"streichen" (hm, stroke) is derived from such.  We say things like
"Die Segel streichen" (Taking in the sails), "Der Wind streicht
durch die Bäume" (The wind sweeps through the trees) and such
things.  "Streichen" is documented as an Onomatopoeia, and,
funnily, the english Wikipedia article for this mentions "bang".

Slash is not that bad, we all come from a very dark and
substantial base, and i think at least subconsciously we take that
with us, and it is a problem even before it becomes conscious.
(Interestingly just today i heard a review of a book of Sacha
Batthyany, "Und was hat das mit mir zu tun?" (What has that got to
do with me?), but not (yet) english i think.)
And, not hundred years ago one could buy liquid human fat
("Axungia hominis") in pharmacies, and usage of dismembered parts
was pretty common, and by 1984 face creams still contained fat
extracted from placenta remains.   Not 150 years ago a preacher
wrote "the thumb of a thieve laid aside from or under the goods
provides fortune for the merchant".  In Cannes this year i heard
times are about cannibalism.  So slash is just as hip as it always
had been.  I will now go and slice some pieces of Austrian cheese.

--steffen

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[John Cowan]

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Steffen Nurpmeso scripsit:

> "Die Segel streichen" (Taking in the sails), 

"Striking the sails" in technical English.  All the nations around the
North and Baltic Seas exchanged their vocabularies like diseases, and if
we didn't have records of their earlier histories, we would know they
were related but we'd never figure out exactly how.  For example, it
can be shown that French bateau, German Boot, common Scandinavian båt,
Irish bád, Scottish Gaelic bàta, Scots boat, and the equivalents in
the various Frisian languages are none of them original native words:
they all were borrowed from English boat.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.
I am large, I contain multitudes.
        --Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Tony Finch]

Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> On Thursday,  7 July 2016 at 16:18:41 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> >>
> >> solidus 2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6,
> >> in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a
> >> shilling-mark.
>
> This was, of course, also the origin of the word "shilling".  The OED
> entry is interesting.

Not quite.

"Shilling" comes from Germanic schilling and Gothic skilliggs.

The name solidus for / comes from the Roman coin solidus, as in the Lsd
notation where / separates the solidi from the denarii.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=shilling
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=solidus

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/  -  I xn--zr8h punycode
North Utsire: Variable, mainly southwesterly, 3 or 4. Slight or moderate.
Showers, fog patches. Moderate or good, occasionally very poor.

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Nemo]

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On 11 July 2016 at 07:20, Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> wrote (in part):
> Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote (in part):
>> On Thursday,  7 July 2016 at 16:18:41 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
>>
>> This was, of course, also the origin of the word "shilling".  The OED
>> entry is interesting.
>
> Not quite.
>
> "Shilling" comes from Germanic schilling and Gothic skilliggs.
>
> The name solidus for / comes from the Roman coin solidus, as in the Lsd
> notation where / separates the solidi from the denarii.
>
> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=shilling
> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=solidus
>
> Tony.

Here is the full OED entry for solidus and the start of that for
shilling.  (Apologies to those whose displays do not show all the
glyphs used.)

solidus
Pl. solidi (ˈsɒlɪdaɪ); also 5–7 solidos.
[L., a substantival use of solidus (sc. nummus) solid a. The form
solidos is the L. acc. pl.]

1. a.1.a A gold coin of the Roman empire, originally worth about 25
denarii. †b.1.b A shilling.

   1387 Trevisa Higden (Rolls) II. 313 Gentil men hade rynges, and
oþere hadde solidy þat were hole and sownde.    1432–50 tr. Higden
(Rolls) VII. 301 Kynge William toke this yere of every hyde of grownde
in Ynglone vj. solidos of silver.    1487 in Paston Lett. III. App.
463, I bequeith to the reparacion of the stepull of the said churche
of Saint Albane xx. solidos.    1609 Bible (Douay) 1 Chron. xxix. 7
And they gaue‥of gold, fiue thousand talentes, and ten thousand
solidos.    1706 Phillips (ed. Kersey), Solidus, an entire or whole
piece of Gold-Coin, near the Value of our old Noble or Spur-Royal; but
it is now taken for a Shilling.    1860 C. R. Smith in Archæol. Cant.
III. 38 The solidi of the Eastern Empire were commonly imitated in
France under the Merovingian princes.    1885 Athenæum 24 Oct. 541/2
Mr. Webster exhibited‥a gold solidus of Constantius.

2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6, in
writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a
shilling-mark. Also attrib. Cf. oblique n. 5.

   1891 in Cent. Dict.    1898 G. Chrystal Introd. Algebra i. (1902) 3
The symbols / (solidus notation) and : (ratio notation) are equivalent
to ÷.    1905 F. H. Collins Author & Printer s.v.    1909 Athenæum 27
Mar. 379/1 The last‥have been quick to adopt the use of the solidus or
slanting line instead of the horizontal bar in writing fractions.
1923 N. Shaw Forecasting Weather i. 35 A solidus (/) such as occurs in
the combination ‘bc/r’ separates weather at the time of observation
from the preceding weather, bc/r thus indicating ‘fine or fair after
rain or drizzle’.    1947 [see non-linear a. b].    1971 Archivum
Linguisticum II. 4 Johnson/Jenkinson's ‘oblique dash’‥, which is
otherwise called a ‘solidus’ or ‘virgule’.


shilling
(ˈʃɪlɪŋ)

Forms: 1 scilling, scylling, (-ingc), 3 ssillinge, 3–6 schillinge, 4
ssyllyng, 4–5 schillyng(e, schelyng(e, shulleng(e, schullyng(e, 4–6
schiling, shill-, shyllyng(e, -inge, silling, 4–7 schilling, 5
schyllynge, shylynge, schilenge, silyn, 5–6 sheling, -yng(e,
shellyng(e, 6 scheling(e, schillengge, shealinge, shyllyn, syllyng, 4–
shilling.

[Common Teut.: OE. scilling masc. = OFris. skilling, skilleng,
schilling, MDu. schellingh (Du. schelling), OS. scilling (MLG.
schillink, schildink, mod.LG. schillink, schilling), OHG. scilling,
skillink, schilling (MHG., G. schilling), ON. skilling-r (Icel. also
skildingr, SW., Da. skilling), Goth. skilliggs:—OTeut. *skilliŋgo-z.
Adopted in OSlav. as skŭlęzĭ, in Sp., Pr., Fr. as escalin (13th c. F.
eskallin, mod.F. also schelling), It. scellino.
   The Teut. word is referred by some etymologists to the root *skell-
to resound, ring (see shill a. and v.1). Others assign it to the root
*skel- to divide (whence skill v., shale n., shell n., etc.); some
have conjectured that the word originally denoted one of the segments
of fixed weight into which an armlet of gold or silver was divided, so
that they might be detached for use as money. In the bilingual
documents of the 6th century, Goth. skilliggs corresponds to the L.
solidus; in mediæval Germany the Teut. and the Latin word were
commonly used to render each other, but in England the correspondence
appears to have been only occasionally recognized until Norman times.
The value of the ‘shilling’ in continental Teut. countries has varied
greatly; its relation to the penny and the pound has also varied,
though a widely accepted scale was 1 pound or libra = 20 shillings or
solidi = 240 pennies or denarii. See schelling, schilling1,
skilling2.]

1. a.1.a A former English money of account, from the Norman Conquest
of the value of 12d. or 1/20 of a pound sterling. Abbreviated s. (= L.
solidus: see solidus1), formerly also sh., shil.; otherwise denoted by
the sign /- after the numeral. No longer in official use after the
introduction of decimal coinage in 1971, but still occas. used to
denote five new pence.
   Before the Norman Conquest the value of the shilling varied in
different times and places. It was 5 pence in Wessex and 4 pence in
Mercia; the shilling of 12 pence mentioned in two passages c 1000 may
refer to the continental solidus.

[...remaining 100 lines omitted...]

[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[Joerg Schilling]

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Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> wrote:

> "Shilling" comes from Germanic schilling and Gothic skilliggs.

The name Schilling comes from the knight Heinrich III. Schilling von Lahnstein (1166 - 
1221).


He had a shining armour...

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Derek Fawcus]

On Fri, Jul 01, 2016 at 08:47:01AM -0400, William Cheswick wrote:
> 
> Actually, MS-DOS was a runtime system, not an operating system, despite the last two letters of its name.
> This is a term of art lost to antiquity.
> Run time systems offered a minimum of features: a loader, a file system, a crappy, built-in shell,
> I/O for keyboards, tape, screens, crude memory management, etc. No multiuser, no network stacks, no separate processes (mostly). DEC had several (RT11, RSTS, RSX) and the line is perhaps a little fuzzy: they were getting operating-ish.

I seem to recall a whole bunch of DOS's for different systems in the early 80's,
where the term seemed to be used in the sense of a System for Operating a Disk.

DF

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Nemo]

On 2 July 2016 at 21:18, Steve Nickolas <usotsuki at buric.co> wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Jul 2016, Nemo wrote:
[...]
>> The MKS Toolkit for OS/2 along with gcc+emx gave a second-order
>> approximation.  (And Warp Connect had 'Net tools, even remote logins
>> with the former.)
>>
>> N.
>
> EMX is either the DJGPP/MinGW or the Cygwin of the OS/2 world, right?

EMX was the massive undertaking by Eberhard Mattes (then at Stuttgart) to
port UNIX stuff to DOS and then OS/2.  Besides gcc, he also ported (La)TeX,
called emtex.  emacs, and a bunch of GNU stuff.   Except for the file system
restrictions, one could have first-order approximation to UNIX;  later OS/2 file
systems had the option of case-sensitivity and an actual OS, hence a
second-order approximation.  I wrote a lot of stuff at home for compilation on
the dep't Sun.  (By the way, a reasonable OS/2 history may be found here:
http://www.os2museum.com)

Now my two favourite desk boxes are a G5 and an SB2500.

N.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Steve Nickolas]

On Sat, 2 Jul 2016, Nemo wrote:

> On 2 July 2016 at 11:32, Steve Nickolas <usotsuki at buric.co> wrote:
> [...]
>> (Actually, I was trying to see if I could make a sort of quasi-'nix out of
>> OS/2 1.0 using Watcom. ;) Haven't been doing too well at that because of
>> Watcom's limited libc.)
>
> The MKS Toolkit for OS/2 along with gcc+emx gave a second-order
> approximation.  (And Warp Connect had 'Net tools, even remote logins
> with the former.)
>
> N.
>

EMX is either the DJGPP/MinGW or the Cygwin of the OS/2 world, right?

-uso.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sat, 2 Jul 2016, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

[ backslash vs. slosh ]

> As I say there, I thought it might be an Australianism.  Dave Horsefall 
> clearly has other views.  Either way, it makes me twitch every time I 
> hear it.

Please, no "e" in "Horsfall" (although it is named after an old 
Anglo/Saxon word, referring to someone who tends horses in a field).

I have a mixed English/Scottish background (with Aussie citizenship), if 
that helps to explain my weird turns of phrase...

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Nemo]

On 2 July 2016 at 11:32, Steve Nickolas <usotsuki at buric.co> wrote:
[...]
> (Actually, I was trying to see if I could make a sort of quasi-'nix out of
> OS/2 1.0 using Watcom. ;) Haven't been doing too well at that because of
> Watcom's limited libc.)

The MKS Toolkit for OS/2 along with gcc+emx gave a second-order
approximation.  (And Warp Connect had 'Net tools, even remote logins
with the former.)

N.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Steve Nickolas]

On Sat, 2 Jul 2016, Ronald Natalie wrote:

>>
>> I think OS/2 was certainly closer to Unix than MS-DOS was.
>>
> Mostly it had the ugliness of both systems.

Not gonna deny that, having been tinkering around with porting stuff to 
the earliest versions of OS/2 lately.

(Actually, I was trying to see if I could make a sort of quasi-'nix out of 
OS/2 1.0 using Watcom. ;) Haven't been doing too well at that because of 
Watcom's limited libc.)

-uso.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Ronald Natalie]

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> 
> I think OS/2 was certainly closer to Unix than MS-DOS was.
> 
Mostly it had the ugliness of both systems.    The presentation manager and various other aspects got points for the concept, but the implementation was really far from robust.    You spent a lot of time hard-rebooting the the thing when it got wedged.   I was so happy to just switch to AIX on all the PS/2s.    One of my contracts was to port AIX to the i860 on a couple of add in cards (the IBM Wizard and then subsequently the W4).   We actually started with the 370 version of the AIX kernel (closer than the i386 version).    Still it was fun because were were running two UNIXes per box:  one on the i860 and the other on the i386.   The TCF (borrowed from the UCLA Locus system) made it all seamlessly move back and forth.    We even had it boogeying with a 370 when we were working at IBM’s Palo Alto center.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Ronald Natalie]

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> 
> The AT also had the 10 MB disk.  Back when I had an AT, I ran Xenix
> System III on it along with the MS C compiler, and was able to create
> console-mode programs to run on everyone else's MS-DOS machines.
> It's hard to remember/believe that Xenix was a Microsoft product before
> DOS was.

I had an Xenix running on my AT as well.

> 
> I would say even RT-11 is somewhere between executive and OS.  It could
> run foreground tasks (hence the name Real Time) if properly sysgenned,
> and it had a decent kernel API that you didn't have to bypass.

I remember the FB (Foreground/Background) version that had more flexibility, even so, it didn’t preempt any running job.   My second paying computer job was writing database software for an RT-11 system.    This was a port of a 370 mainframe application to do lab test management at Hopkins hospital.   This was after the two guys who were tasked with porting it to the Series-1 were having a hard time with it.    Being the wizkid, the IBM guys brought me a 3101 Ascii terminal and asked if I could do anything with it and I connected it to the RT system in lieu of the ADM3 I had been using.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Brantley Coile]

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The dual notch worked on Apple, as it didn’t use the index hole either. Woz didn’t see any sense in the index hole. This scheme only worked after the media for all the disks were two sided, oxide on both sides of the mylar. At first they were made from the same sheets as 1/2” magnetic tape, which has oxide on only one side.

My first floppy drive was in 1978 and it sure beat paper tape!

  Brantley Coile

> On Jul 2, 2016, at 12:37 AM, SZIGETI Szabolcs <szigiszabolcs at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I think that only worked on the Commodore 64 and likes, where the drive did not use the index hole to identify the start of sectors/tracks. Punching a hole there was much harder operation, than cutting a new write protect notch.
> 
> Szanolcs
> 
> 2016.07.02. 2:16 ezt írta ("Dave Horsfall" <dave at horsfall.org>):
> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> 
> > Those original floppies were I believe 160K. If you paid extra, the box
> > would hold two drives. Later, IBM introduced double-sided drives, at
> > 320K each.
> 
> Those in the know, of course, simply put a notch on the opposite side.
> 
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[SZIGETI Szabolcs]

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Hi,

I think that only worked on the Commodore 64 and likes, where the drive did
not use the index hole to identify the start of sectors/tracks. Punching a
hole there was much harder operation, than cutting a new write protect
notch.

Szanolcs
2016.07.02. 2:16 ezt írta ("Dave Horsfall" <dave at horsfall.org>):

> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Marc Rochkind wrote:
>
> > Those original floppies were I believe 160K. If you paid extra, the box
> > would hold two drives. Later, IBM introduced double-sided drives, at
> > 320K each.
>
> Those in the know, of course, simply put a notch on the opposite side.
>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."
>
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[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Friday,  1 July 2016 at 18:27:02 -0400, Jacob Ritorto wrote:
>>
>> Marc Rochkind scripsit:
>>
>>> Since the forward slash was used for command-line options, paths used a
>>> backwards slash.
>
> Does anyone besides me bristle at the term "forward slash?"

Does anybody not?  I've even written a Rant about it:
http://www.lemis.com/grog/Rant/bad-language.php#forward-slash

As I say there, I thought it might be an Australianism.  Dave
Horsefall clearly has other views.  Either way, it makes me twitch
every time I hear it.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at FreeBSD.org 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
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[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Dave Horsfall]

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On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Jacob Ritorto wrote:

> Does anyone besides me bristle at the term "forward slash?"  In my day 
> (although I'm under fifty), we called them slash and backslash.  The M$ 
> culture seems to encourage this redundant advective as normal parlance.

In my day, it was "slash" and "slosh" (you need to be Australian to 
understand).

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Steve Nickolas]

On Sat, 2 Jul 2016, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Marc Rochkind wrote:
>
>> Those original floppies were I believe 160K. If you paid extra, the box
>> would hold two drives. Later, IBM introduced double-sided drives, at
>> 320K each.
>
> Those in the know, of course, simply put a notch on the opposite side.

Well, yeah, if the drive let you. I did that on the Apple ][ all the time.

But try that on a 5150 and you get "Drive not ready". :/

-uso.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Kurt H Maier]

On Fri, Jul 01, 2016 at 07:44:09PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> Jacob Ritorto scripsit:
> 
> > Does anyone besides me bristle at the term "forward slash?"  In my day
> > (although I'm under fifty), we called them slash and backslash.  The M$
> > culture seems to encourage this redundant advective as normal parlance.
> 
> I encourage it, after hearing people say "Aitch tee tee pee, colon,
> backslash, backslash, ...."
> 

NPR did this on a national basis for many, many years.

khm

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Steve Nickolas]

On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, John Cowan wrote:

> Jacob Ritorto scripsit:
>
>> Does anyone besides me bristle at the term "forward slash?"  In my day
>> (although I'm under fifty), we called them slash and backslash.  The M$
>> culture seems to encourage this redundant advective as normal parlance.
>
> I encourage it, after hearing people say "Aitch tee tee pee, colon,
> backslash, backslash, ...."
>
>

Oy gevalt. *crumbles to dust*

-uso.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Dave Horsfall]

On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Marc Rochkind wrote:

> Those original floppies were I believe 160K. If you paid extra, the box 
> would hold two drives. Later, IBM introduced double-sided drives, at 
> 320K each.

Those in the know, of course, simply put a notch on the opposite side.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[John Cowan]

Jacob Ritorto scripsit:

> Does anyone besides me bristle at the term "forward slash?"  In my day
> (although I'm under fifty), we called them slash and backslash.  The M$
> culture seems to encourage this redundant advective as normal parlance.

I encourage it, after hearing people say "Aitch tee tee pee, colon,
backslash, backslash, ...."

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Arise, you prisoners of Windows / Arise, you slaves of Redmond, Wash,
The day and hour soon are coming / When all the IT folks say "Gosh!"
It isn't from a clever lawsuit / That Windowsland will finally fall,
But thousands writing open source code / Like mice who nibble through a wall.
        --The Linux-nationale by Greg Baker

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Jacob Goense]

On 2016-07-01 18:27, Jacob Ritorto wrote:
>> Marc Rochkind scripsit:
>> 
>>> Since the forward slash was used for command-line options, paths
>> used a
>>> backwards slash.
> 
> Does anyone besides me bristle at the term "forward slash?"  In my day
> (although I'm under fifty), we called them slash and backslash.  The
> M$ culture seems to encourage this redundant advective as normal
> parlance.

Yes, but not but not when used for emphasis.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Jacob Ritorto]

>
> Marc Rochkind scripsit:
>
> > Since the forward slash was used for command-line options, paths used a
> > backwards slash.



Does anyone besides me bristle at the term "forward slash?"  In my day
(although I'm under fifty), we called them slash and backslash.  The M$
culture seems to encourage this redundant advective as normal parlance.

--jake
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[TUHS] MS-DOS

[John Cowan]

Marc Rochkind scripsit:

> Since the forward slash was used for command-line options, paths used a
> backwards slash.

This use of forward slashes came into MS-DOS from CP/M, which got it from
the DEC operating systems.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Yes, chili in the eye is bad, but so is your ear.  However, I would
suggest you wash your hands thoroughly before going to the toilet.
        --gadicath

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[John Cowan]

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Clem Cole scripsit:

> ​UNIX could (and did) at the time --   by the time of the AT (which was
> when the PC's hockey stick curve took off) an 5.25" floppy had a capacity
> of 1.44M.  An RK05, the V6 and V7 standard,  was 2.5 M which is a 40% loss
> of space, but it was do-able.  

The AT also had the 10 MB disk.  Back when I had an AT, I ran Xenix
System III on it along with the MS C compiler, and was able to create
console-mode programs to run on everyone else's MS-DOS machines.
It's hard to remember/believe that Xenix was a Microsoft product before
DOS was.

> > DEC had several (RT11, RSTS, RSX) and the line is perhaps a little fuzzy:
> > they were getting operating-ish.
> >
> ​Be careful here Ches.  RT-11 and DOS-11 meet your (and my definitions).

I would say even RT-11 is somewhere between executive and OS.  It could
run foreground tasks (hence the name Real Time) if properly sysgenned,
and it had a decent kernel API that you didn't have to bypass.

> But RSTS and RSX were multi-users and ran (run) protected mode, have/had
> full networking stacks etc.  

+1

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
We pledge allegiance to the penguin and to the intellectual property
regime for which he stands, one world under Linux, with free music
and open source software for all.  --Julian Dibbell on Brazil, edited

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Steve Nickolas]

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On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Clem Cole wrote:

> ​Networking not so much.  You definitely could (and people did/do) add
> networking to executives.  In those days, DEC has DECnet for their systems
> (including MS-DOS) and today in the IoT world, I use many of my Arduino's
> with network connections.  But I the programing is very much like it was in
> my DOS-8/DOS-11/RT-11 days.

I've seen TSR network stacks for MS-DOS; I don't *use* such, but they 
exist.

> ​We ran V7 on 8" floppies (SA800's from Shugart Associates IIRC).  These
> were ~ 256K each.  You did have to swap disks in/out a little as Marc
> described.   You booted from one Floppy and replaced it with a "root" FS
> floppy after the OS loaded.   But it all could and did fit.  You had ad
> editor, the compilers, etc.

I think that's how Minix worked on 5.25" floppies too, if I remember how I 
got it up on my old Tandy 1000EX.

> So it all come back to my basic point.   The PC and MS-DOS >>could<< have
> been made to be in the image of UNIX easily; if people had cared or it was
> needed/desired.   But economics caused it to stay in "all its crapiness"
> not technology.

I think OS/2 was certainly closer to Unix than MS-DOS was.

-uso.

[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Clem Cole]

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On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 8:47 AM, William Cheswick <ches at cheswick.com> wrote:
>
>
> MS-DOS was a better choice at the time than Unix.

​Mumble - the question is what is UNIX.  When comparing MS-DOS to UNIX, I'm
talking about the kernel and the programming API.   Unix as a Kernel could
be very small.​  You might not have had as many commands as we do today
/{,usr}/*bin but it could and did fit.   We ran V7 off floppies on LSI-11s
in those days.   It worked just fine.



> It had to fit on floppies, and was very simple.
>
​UNIX could (and did) at the time --   by the time of the AT (which was
when the PC's hockey stick curve took off) an 5.25" floppy had a capacity
of 1.44M.  An RK05, the V6 and V7 standard,  was 2.5 M which is a 40% loss
of space, but it was do-able.  We also know swapping would have been
slower, but again, had been and was done.  I will say, I used to have an 8"
floppy insides hanging over my desk at one point.  You see that there is no
magnetic material left near the center -- where the i-list was.



>
> “Unix is a system administrations nightmare” — dmr
>
​+1 -- this would have been an issue, particularly pre-Goble work on
getting the write ordering correct.  Halts and crashes trashed the FS and
that was an issue!!​  But it was fixed when people cared, and I suspect if
a Unix-ish system had been on the low end, it would have been addressed.




>
> Actually, MS-DOS was a runtime system, not an operating system, despite
> the last two letters of its name.
>
​Amen​.  I use the words "executive."  Or as I have said, it was really
agreement between applications programs on how modify the disk structures
and what could be left in what places in main memory.  As Marc apply points
out, applications >>had to<< by-pass MS-DOS because the HW was not very
good and there really were not good services from the "OS" provided.




> This is a term of art lost to antiquity.
>
​Amen -- sad and very important. ​




> Run time systems offered a minimum of features: a loader, a file system, a
> crappy, built-in shell,
> I/O for keyboards, tape, screens, crude memory management, etc.

And most importantly, were based around an agreement between programs, but
that agreement had no way to be enforced.​



> No multiuser, no network stacks, no separate processes (mostly).

​Networking not so much.  You definitely could (and people did/do) add
networking to executives.  In those days, DEC has DECnet for their systems
(including MS-DOS) and today in the IoT world, I use many of my Arduino's
with network connections.  But I the programing is very much like it was in
my DOS-8/DOS-11/RT-11 days.



> DEC had several (RT11, RSTS, RSX) and the line is perhaps a little fuzzy:
> they were getting operating-ish.
>
​Be careful here Ches.  RT-11 and DOS-11 meet your (and my definitions).
But RSTS and RSX were multi-users and ran (run) protected mode, have/had
full networking stacks etc.  [There is even a lively network of historic
DEC users that to this day have those systems running and available on the
Internet and few member of which lurk and even sometimes comment on this
mailing list].




>
> It all had to fit on a floppy (do I remember correctly that the original
> floppyies, SSSD, were 90KB?), run
> flight simulator and some business apps.

​We ran V7 on 8" floppies (SA800's from Shugart Associates IIRC).  These
were ~ 256K each.  You did have to swap disks in/out a little as Marc
described.   You booted from one Floppy and replaced it with a "root" FS
floppy after the OS loaded.   But it all could and did fit.  You had ad
editor, the compilers, etc.

That said, no graphics files or other stuff   Which as you point out was
important.




> MSDOS lasted a decade, and served the PC world well, for all its
> ​ ​
> crapiness.

​I basically agree.   Although I think it could have been a UNIX-like
substance just as easily >>if<< people had cared.   They key point is that
they did not:  MS-DOS was good enough for what the market needed, and it
was not economically interesting to try supplant it.   The PC (together
with MS-DOS) was a classic "Christensen​ style disruption" to the
minicomputer industry.  As the good Professor points out, the PC was not as
technically good as the technology it replaced, but it was served a new
market that did not care and was good enough for it.



> Win 3.1 was an attempt at an OS, and Win 95 an actual one, with a network
> stack and everything.

​Again - classic Christensen disruption.   The faster moving technology
starts to catch up with the established one.​

So it all come back to my basic point.   The PC and MS-DOS >>could<< have
been made to be in the image of UNIX easily; if people had cared or it was
needed/desired.   But economics caused it to stay in "all its crapiness"
not technology.
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[TUHS] MS-DOS

[Marc Rochkind]

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Bill: "MS-DOS was a runtime system, not an operating system"

Well said... that's completely true.

Those original floppies were I believe 160K. If you paid extra, the box
would hold two drives. Later, IBM introduced double-sided drives, at 320K
each.

The XT model, with a built-in hard drive (10MB as I recall) came out
one-and-a-half years after the original, in 1983. With it came MS-DOS 2.0,
with a hierarchical file system.

Since the forward slash was used for command-line options, paths used a
backwards slash.

--Marc

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 6:47 AM, William Cheswick <ches at cheswick.com> wrote:

> >>​...​why didn't they have a more capable kernel than MS-DOS?
> ​>I don't think they cared. or felt it was needed at the time (I disagreed
> then and still do).
>
> MS-DOS was a better choice at the time than Unix. It had to fit on
> floppies, and was very simple.
>
> “Unix is a system administrations nightmare” — dmr
>
> Actually, MS-DOS was a runtime system, not an operating system, despite
> the last two letters of its name.
> This is a term of art lost to antiquity.
> Run time systems offered a minimum of features: a loader, a file system, a
> crappy, built-in shell,
> I/O for keyboards, tape, screens, crude memory management, etc. No
> multiuser, no network stacks, no separate processes (mostly). DEC had
> several (RT11, RSTS, RSX) and the line is perhaps a little fuzzy: they were
> getting operating-ish.
>
> It all had to fit on a floppy (do I remember correctly that the original
> floppyies, SSSD, were 90KB?), run
> flight simulator and some business apps.  MSDOS lasted a decade, and
> served the PC world well, for all its
> crapiness.  Win 3.1 was an attempt at an OS, and Win 95 an actual one,
> with a network stack and everything.
>
> >I agree with 90% of what he says, but not about Algol 68.  He obviously
> >has a strong preference for small languages: it would be interesting
> >to see his uncensored opinions of C++, the Godzilla of our day as Ada
>
> I’d be astonished if he had anything good at all to say about C++.
>
> He’s still around…you could ask him...
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[TUHS] MS-DOS

[William Cheswick]

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>>​...​why didn't they have a more capable kernel than MS-DOS?
​>I don't think they cared. or felt it was needed at the time (I disagreed then and still do).

MS-DOS was a better choice at the time than Unix. It had to fit on floppies, and was very simple.

“Unix is a system administrations nightmare” — dmr

Actually, MS-DOS was a runtime system, not an operating system, despite the last two letters of its name.
This is a term of art lost to antiquity.
Run time systems offered a minimum of features: a loader, a file system, a crappy, built-in shell,
I/O for keyboards, tape, screens, crude memory management, etc. No multiuser, no network stacks, no separate processes (mostly). DEC had several (RT11, RSTS, RSX) and the line is perhaps a little fuzzy: they were getting operating-ish.

It all had to fit on a floppy (do I remember correctly that the original floppyies, SSSD, were 90KB?), run
flight simulator and some business apps.  MSDOS lasted a decade, and served the PC world well, for all its
crapiness.  Win 3.1 was an attempt at an OS, and Win 95 an actual one, with a network stack and everything.

>I agree with 90% of what he says, but not about Algol 68.  He obviously
>has a strong preference for small languages: it would be interesting
>to see his uncensored opinions of C++, the Godzilla of our day as Ada

I’d be astonished if he had anything good at all to say about C++.

He’s still around…you could ask him...