[TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO

[arnold@skeeve.com]

Oh, I'm not arguing with any of this. I'm merely noting that
you are unusual in your ability to easily visualize pic results
from looking at the code.

Arnold

Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> Well, I stand behind my comments.  Take a look at what xfig(1) 
> produces and contrast that with even an average pic(1) source
> file.  You can't see what xfig is saying but you can easily see
> what pic is saying.
>
> Maybe people just haven't written much pic, but what you can do
> with it, and see without rendering it, is pretty amazing.
>
> I got James Clark to add the 'i'th concept so you could do for
> loops to lay out elements and I wrote a pic script where you 
> could set variables like cpus, networks, disks and it would
> draw different configurations of a SPARCcluster.  
>
> Pic is pretty neat, I find it easier to read than any of the
> other troff preprocessors.
>
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 09:05:20AM -0600, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> > Hi All.
> > 
> > Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > > > I've always believed that pic was so well designed
> > > > because it took a day to get the print out (back then),
> > >
> > > I'm afraid this belief is urban legend. Credit for pic is due 100% to
> > > Kernighan, not to the contemporary pace of computing practice.
> > 
> > I occassionally forward TUHS items (that I think are) of interest
> > to Brian.  I have in the past forwarded one of Larry's "I like pic
> > because I can read the code and visualize the picture" emails to
> > him.  He responded that he didn't work that way. :-)
> > 
> > Here, by permission, is his response to Larry's latest note of
> > that kind, which I think is also of more or less general interest:
> > 
> > > Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2022 19:03:00 -0400 (EDT)
> > > From: Brian Kernighan <bwk@cs.princeton.edu>
> > > To: arnold@skeeve.com
> > > Subject: Re: larry mcvoy on pic, again
> > >
> > > I don't know that I would read too much into the development of
> > > Pic, though my memory is so dim that it would all be made up
> > > anyway.
> > >
> > > One observation: with Yacc and Lex available, languages were a lot
> > > easier to implement; I had already done a troff preprocessor so
> > > that aspect was well in hand.  And I was actually the owner of
> > > troff at the same time, so I could mix and match (e.g., the
> > > primitives for drawing lines).  I think that "seeing the output"
> > > wasn't too hard, either because I could use the typesetter, or the
> > > Tectronix 4014 (?) for which there was a troff output emulator
> > > that I think I wrote.
> > >
> > > The main issues as I recall were figuring out coordinate systems,
> > > since Pic had Y going positive as with conventional plotting,
> > > while troff had it going negative (down the page is higher Y
> > > values).
> > >
> > > But it's all kind of fuzzy at this point.
>
> -- 
> ---
> Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat