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* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
@ 2020-01-08  7:39 Thomas Paulsen
  2020-01-08 15:58 ` Steve Nickolas
  2020-01-08 21:49 ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Thomas Paulsen @ 2020-01-08  7:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: arnold; +Cc: tuhs

>What's funny is that in doing the work to get 'se' running on Georgia
>Tech's Vax, I had to learn vi.  By the time I was done, vi had become
>my main editor and had burned itself into my finger's ROMs.
I do ed/se occasionally for simple tasks, vim frequently , because it loads fast, and emacs for all bigger projects, beside liteide for golang. 



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-08  7:39 [TUHS] screen editors Thomas Paulsen
@ 2020-01-08 15:58 ` Steve Nickolas
  2020-01-08 23:41   ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-01-08 21:49 ` Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Steve Nickolas @ 2020-01-08 15:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Thomas Paulsen; +Cc: tuhs

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, Thomas Paulsen wrote:

>> What's funny is that in doing the work to get 'se' running on Georgia
>> Tech's Vax, I had to learn vi.  By the time I was done, vi had become
>> my main editor and had burned itself into my finger's ROMs.
> I do ed/se occasionally for simple tasks, vim frequently , because it 
> loads fast, and emacs for all bigger projects, beside liteide for 
> golang.

For what it's worth, I use nano. (Yeah, I know, not very unixy.)

I think the first fullscreen text editor I used was FrEdWriter (by Paul 
Lutus and Al Rogers) for the Apple ][.  After that it was IBM's E.  I 
haven't really used vi *or* emacs much.

-uso.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-08  7:39 [TUHS] screen editors Thomas Paulsen
  2020-01-08 15:58 ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2020-01-08 21:49 ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-01-08 22:01   ` Clem Cole
  2020-01-10  8:13   ` markus schnalke
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-01-08 21:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, Thomas Paulsen wrote:

> I do ed/se occasionally for simple tasks, vim frequently , because it loads fast, and emacs for all bigger projects, beside liteide for golang.

I had a boss once who insisted that all his staff learn "ed", because one 
day it might be the only editor available; he was right...

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-08 21:49 ` Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-01-08 22:01   ` Clem Cole
  2020-01-17 23:38     ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-01-10  8:13   ` markus schnalke
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-01-08 22:01 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 4:50 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> I had a boss once who insisted that all his staff learn "ed", because one
> day it might be the only editor available; he was right...
>
I always suggest it.  It means you can use sed and lot of other tools
pretty quick.
And if you know ed, you can use almost anything close to it.   I hated
DOS's edlin but if I was stuck it was close enough.

Although the famous ? error from the original version was annoying.

Truly, I still suggest that any modern user, take Rob and Brian's book and
until you can do the exercises without think about it, you really are not
yet comfortable with UNIX.  I even recommend at least read and looking at
the chapter on nroff.

Clem

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* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-08 15:58 ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2020-01-08 23:41   ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-01-09  1:43     ` Nemo Nusquam
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-01-08 23:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, Steve Nickolas wrote:

> I think the first fullscreen text editor I used was FrEdWriter (by Paul 
> Lutus and Al Rogers) for the Apple ][.  After that it was IBM's E.  I 
> haven't really used vi *or* emacs much.

First I used was DEC's "EDT" and could never get used to the "gold" key...

Fortunately I was not required to use RSX (or was it VMS?) as I was 
strictly a PDP Unix bod at the time; I was just curious.

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-08 23:41   ` Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-01-09  1:43     ` Nemo Nusquam
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Nemo Nusquam @ 2020-01-09  1:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

On 01/08/20 18:41, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> [...]
> First I used was DEC's "EDT" and could never get used to the "gold" 
> key...
>
> Fortunately I was not required to use RSX (or was it VMS?) as I was 
> strictly a PDP Unix bod at the time; I was just curious.
>
> -- Dave

It was VMS and I had forgotten all about the Gold Key until now.

N.


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-08 21:49 ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-01-08 22:01   ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-01-10  8:13   ` markus schnalke
  2020-01-10  8:17     ` U'll Be King of the Stars
                       ` (3 more replies)
  1 sibling, 4 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: markus schnalke @ 2020-01-10  8:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Hoi.

[2020-01-09 08:49] Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
> On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, Thomas Paulsen wrote:
> 
> > I do ed/se occasionally for simple tasks, vim frequently ,
> > because it loads fast, and emacs for all bigger projects,
> > beside liteide for golang.
> 
> I had a boss once who insisted that all his staff learn "ed",
> because one day it might be the only editor available; he was
> right...

On a modern Linux system, ed isn't even installed ... 8-O

I was quite shocked when I first realized that I had to do
`apt-get install ed' to have it available ... on a Unix-like
system. But on the other hand, who of today's users is even
capable of exiting it?!


On my own systems I like to install Heirlomm ed, which I have
outfactored from the Heirloom tools package. If you want to
actually use it every now and then, Gunnar's ed is much more
usable than GNU ed ... which seems to be more a demonstration
object than actually a programmer's editor.


Anyways, I'm having a great pleasure reading those historic
spotlights on editors these days. :-)


meillo

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-10  8:13   ` markus schnalke
@ 2020-01-10  8:17     ` U'll Be King of the Stars
  2020-01-11 19:58       ` markus schnalke
  2020-01-10 13:41     ` [TUHS] screen editors / machine load Mike Markowski
                       ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: U'll Be King of the Stars @ 2020-01-10  8:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: markus schnalke, tuhs

On 10/01/2020 08:13, markus schnalke wrote:
> GNU ed [...] seems to be more a demonstration
> object than actually a programmer's editor.

Hi Markus, in what way is GNU ed a "demonstration object"?

Andrew
-- 
OpenPGP key: EB28 0338 28B7 19DA DAB0  B193 D21D 996E 883B E5B9

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors / machine load
  2020-01-10  8:13   ` markus schnalke
  2020-01-10  8:17     ` U'll Be King of the Stars
@ 2020-01-10 13:41     ` Mike Markowski
  2020-01-10 13:56       ` Otto Moerbeek
  2020-01-10 15:00       ` Mary Ann Horton
  2020-01-10 15:31     ` [TUHS] screen editors Nemo Nusquam
  2020-01-10 15:58     ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  3 siblings, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Mike Markowski @ 2020-01-10 13:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

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[2020-01-09 08:49] Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
> > I had a boss once who insisted that all his staff learn "ed",
> > because one day it might be the only editor available; he was
> > right...
>

I first used Unix on a pdp-11/70 in 1981, first year at university.  My
professor stopped by the computing center to see how his students were
doing - super nice of him and a perk to pre-PC times! - and was showing me
something or other regarding Unix.  I had only used ed to that point and
seeing him fire up vi was practically sci-fi to me.  He showed me a few
commands and vowed me to secrecy for fear if all students started using it,
it would bring the 11/70 to its knees.  Were multiple vi sessions really
such a potential burden to the machine?  I wouldn't think so with the slow
nature of human i/o, yet there certainly were times when the pdp-11/70
crashed as project due dates loomed closer and closer!

Also, I very much enjoy this list.  As an EE I use Unix-like OSes as a tool
rather being a builder of the tool like many here.  So I don't have the
deep background to contribute to the collective history, but I'm on the
sidelines enjoying the show.  As a brief tie-in to the editor comparisons,
I do a lot of DSP work for RF systems these days.  Python makes it quick
and easy to try new math, but has a maddening requirement that indentation
be strictly tabs or strictly spaces.  Text window pasting into a tab
indented python file wreaks havoc.  vim yank/put between split windows
retains the type of white space and lets me use my vi muscle memory.

Happy 2020,
Mike Markowski

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors / machine load
  2020-01-10 13:41     ` [TUHS] screen editors / machine load Mike Markowski
@ 2020-01-10 13:56       ` Otto Moerbeek
  2020-01-10 15:00       ` Mary Ann Horton
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Otto Moerbeek @ 2020-01-10 13:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Mike Markowski; +Cc: TUHS main list

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 08:41:53AM -0500, Mike Markowski wrote:

> [2020-01-09 08:49] Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
> > > I had a boss once who insisted that all his staff learn "ed",
> > > because one day it might be the only editor available; he was
> > > right...
> >
> 
> I first used Unix on a pdp-11/70 in 1981, first year at university.  My
> professor stopped by the computing center to see how his students were
> doing - super nice of him and a perk to pre-PC times! - and was showing me
> something or other regarding Unix.  I had only used ed to that point and
> seeing him fire up vi was practically sci-fi to me.  He showed me a few
> commands and vowed me to secrecy for fear if all students started using it,
> it would bring the 11/70 to its knees.  Were multiple vi sessions really
> such a potential burden to the machine?  I wouldn't think so with the slow
> nature of human i/o, yet there certainly were times when the pdp-11/70
> crashed as project due dates loomed closer and closer!
> 
> Also, I very much enjoy this list.  As an EE I use Unix-like OSes as a tool
> rather being a builder of the tool like many here.  So I don't have the
> deep background to contribute to the collective history, but I'm on the
> sidelines enjoying the show.  As a brief tie-in to the editor comparisons,
> I do a lot of DSP work for RF systems these days.  Python makes it quick
> and easy to try new math, but has a maddening requirement that indentation
> be strictly tabs or strictly spaces.  Text window pasting into a tab
> indented python file wreaks havoc.  vim yank/put between split windows
> retains the type of white space and lets me use my vi muscle memory.
> 
> Happy 2020,
> Mike Markowski

In my first year at university (1984) we had a VAX-11/750 running
4.1BSD with too many students. We had to switch to ex once in a while
to get any editing done. I believe it was not only vi itself that was
causing the load, it was also running many terminals in raw mode that
killed performance.

	-Otto


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors / machine load
  2020-01-10 13:41     ` [TUHS] screen editors / machine load Mike Markowski
  2020-01-10 13:56       ` Otto Moerbeek
@ 2020-01-10 15:00       ` Mary Ann Horton
  2020-01-10 15:48         ` Clem Cole
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-01-10 15:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Yes, it was a real concern. Physical memory on the shared PDP-11 was 
limited, and if everyone had a separate copy of vi running the machine 
would swap itself silly.

This only mattered if everyone had their own separate copy of vi 
installed. The fix was to put vi in a single system directory, such as 
/usr/ucb or /exptools. The instruction part of its memory would be 
shared among all the users, resulting in much less swapping.

In the early days, people tended to have their own personal copy because 
the Berkeley tools did not come standard with UNIX, especially at Bell 
Labs. That was one of the main motivations for Exptools (the 
"experimental tools"), which were basically 2BSD's applications and some 
other tools like Warren Montgomery's emacs. Disk space and people's time 
spend installing were also good reasons.

     Mary Ann

On 1/10/20 5:41 AM, Mike Markowski wrote:
> seeing him fire up vi was practically sci-fi to me.  He showed me a 
> few commands and vowed me to secrecy for fear if all students started 
> using it, it would bring the 11/70 to its knees.  Were multiple vi 
> sessions really such a potential burden to the machine?  I wouldn't 
> think so with the slow nature of human i/o, yet there certainly were 
> times when the pdp-11/70 crashed as project due dates loomed closer 
> and closer!

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-10  8:13   ` markus schnalke
  2020-01-10  8:17     ` U'll Be King of the Stars
  2020-01-10 13:41     ` [TUHS] screen editors / machine load Mike Markowski
@ 2020-01-10 15:31     ` Nemo Nusquam
  2020-01-10 16:04       ` Clem Cole
  2020-01-10 17:10       ` Dan Cross
  2020-01-10 15:58     ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  3 siblings, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Nemo Nusquam @ 2020-01-10 15:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

On 01/10/20 03:13, markus schnalke wrote (in part):
> Hoi.
[...]
> Anyways, I'm having a great pleasure reading those historic
> spotlights on editors these days. :-)
In earlier days, my wife was given email by telnetting to an SGI system 
and using elm.  One day, I visited her office as she was composing a 
message.  Intrigued, I asked her what the editor was. She did not know 
and pointed to her cheat-sheet listing editor commands.  One was ^X^C to 
exit-and-send.  She is not a programmer and I was a bit surprised at 
their choice.

N.

>
>
> meillo


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors / machine load
  2020-01-10 15:00       ` Mary Ann Horton
@ 2020-01-10 15:48         ` Clem Cole
  2020-01-10 22:18           ` Adam Thornton
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-01-10 15:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Mary Ann Horton; +Cc: TUHS main list

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On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:00 AM Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net> wrote:

> Yes, it was a real concern. Physical memory on the shared PDP-11 was
> limited, and if everyone had a separate copy of vi running the machine
> would swap itself silly.
>
> This only mattered if everyone had their own separate copy of vi
> installed. The fix was to put vi in a single system directory, such as
> /usr/ucb or /exptools. The instruction part of its memory would be
> shared among all the users, resulting in much less swapping.
>
Actually it was much worse than that...

What Mary Ann points out was mostly true of your PDP-11 had DH11's
installed; which had deeper hardware buffering and 16 character DMA on
output.   But these were expensive from DEC and also took up a 'full system
unit' in the CPU for 16 lines.   Until Able (much later) released the
DMAX-11 (*a.k.a.* DH/DM) product of a DH11 clone on a single board, many
university sites did not use them; but used multiple DL-11/KL-11's instead.

If your system was configured with DL/KL11s or similar (CMU had it's own
called 'ASLIs' - a synchronous line interfaces) each character took one
interrupt for each either input or output.  Moreover, the UARTS that DEC
used which were made by Western Digital had 2 >>or less<< characters of
input buffering, so they could drop chars[1].  The ASLI's used a later chip
with a slightly better buffer IIRC but I admit I've forgotten the details
(Jim Tetter probably remembers them).

So if you had a single line, the interrupt load was huge on a PDP-11.  For
this reason, a lot of sites limited glass TTYs to speeds like 2400 or 4800
baud, not the full 9600.

DEC later released the DZ-11 which worked on units of 8 ports per board.
Unfortunately, it was not DMA and the buffering was still pretty shallow.
 Joy did a lot of work on 4.1BSD in the DZ driver to cut down the
interrupts because 9600 baud DZ lines could swamp a vax and when running
the BerkNet between systems (before UCB had ethernet), 9600 baud serial
lines were standard.


[1]  Two things
 A) The original WD UART chip had very limited buffering.   The timing was
such that as high rates it could not empty accept a second character
without the first being overwritten.  This was a long-standing issue for
many UARTs long in the 1990s.  The original chip NS built and IBM used on
the PC (the NS8250) was notorious for the same problem.  By the time of
Motorola's 6881, it had 8 characters of buffering IIRC.

B) As I understand the history, Gordon developed the original idea of the
UART at DEC for the PDP-1. But I'm not sure of the patent details. He does
not list the UART patent on his web site although he does mention inventing
it.   I have been under the impression CMU was somehow mixed up in the
patent and licensing of it, *i.e.* WD got the license from CMU to make them
not DEC; which was part of why we had the ASLI's.  Again, IIRC, we got the
UART chips from WD at cost and could make the ALSI's locally much cheaper
than DL-11s.  >>I think<< the story was that one of Gordon's student's
designed a chip, which WD fabbed and licensed.  Before that DEC had built
UARTs on boards from transistors and later logic gates.

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* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-10  8:13   ` markus schnalke
                       ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2020-01-10 15:31     ` [TUHS] screen editors Nemo Nusquam
@ 2020-01-10 15:58     ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Theodore Y. Ts'o @ 2020-01-10 15:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: markus schnalke; +Cc: tuhs

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 09:13:04AM +0100, markus schnalke wrote:
> 
> I was quite shocked when I first realized that I had to do
> `apt-get install ed' to have it available ... on a Unix-like
> system. But on the other hand, who of today's users is even
> capable of exiting it?!

For what it's worth, I regularly edit configuration files and shell
scripts using /bin/ed in environments where I can't use (due to
terminal limitations) or can't fit a more sophisticated editors.
These days this is typically in small appliance VM's.

I've also been known to do things like this in shell scripts[1]:

ed /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf <<EOF
/^server.document-root/s/^/#/p
/^index-file.names/s/^/#/p
/^include_shell.*create-mime/s/^/#/p
w
q
EOF

[1] https://github.com/tytso/xfstests-bld/blob/master/kvm-xfstests/test-appliance/gce-xfstests-bld.sh

And for years, I knew how to exit ed and emacs, but had trouble
exiting vi.  :-)

					- Ted
					




> 
> 
> On my own systems I like to install Heirlomm ed, which I have
> outfactored from the Heirloom tools package. If you want to
> actually use it every now and then, Gunnar's ed is much more
> usable than GNU ed ... which seems to be more a demonstration
> object than actually a programmer's editor.
> 
> 
> Anyways, I'm having a great pleasure reading those historic
> spotlights on editors these days. :-)
> 
> 
> meillo

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-10 15:31     ` [TUHS] screen editors Nemo Nusquam
@ 2020-01-10 16:04       ` Clem Cole
  2020-01-10 17:10       ` Dan Cross
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-01-10 16:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Nemo Nusquam; +Cc: TUHS main list

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On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:39 AM Nemo Nusquam <cym224@gmail.com> wrote:

> Intrigued, I asked her what the editor was. She did not know
> and pointed to her cheat-sheet listing editor commands.  One was ^X^C to
> exit-and-send.  She is not a programmer and I was a bit surprised at
> their choice.
>
Similar fun Unix/ITS emacs story.

In the mid/later 1970s, my least techie sister Cynthia was/is a concert
harpist with a degree from Oberlin's conservatory.  She can type extremely
fast as she has super manual dexterity.  But playing the harp is not
something that paid a great deal or offered her 'regular' gigs, so to make
the monthly rent she got a job working at MIT as Ron Rivest's admin .  She
typed all the RSA papers in emacs and tex on one of the MIT systems.  She
did not know any better, that's what they gave her/taught her.   When she
later would look for a job at other places and they would ask her, 'do you
know how to use a Wang System' and she would say: "No, I know emacs" [for
the younger set, longer before MS-Word, "Wang" was synonymous with "word
processor" and many/most commercial offices had a 'Wang unit" for the folks
doing the typing.].

 [As a side note when she found out the elevators were hacked and
controlled by the student's different computers, she stopped using them and
would take the stairs in Tech Sq].

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* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-10 15:31     ` [TUHS] screen editors Nemo Nusquam
  2020-01-10 16:04       ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-01-10 17:10       ` Dan Cross
  2020-01-10 17:18         ` Steve Nickolas
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2020-01-10 17:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Nemo Nusquam; +Cc: TUHS main list

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On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:39 AM Nemo Nusquam <cym224@gmail.com> wrote:

> In earlier days, my wife was given email by telnetting to an SGI system
> and using elm.  One day, I visited her office as she was composing a
> message.  Intrigued, I asked her what the editor was. She did not know
> and pointed to her cheat-sheet listing editor commands.  One was ^X^C to
> exit-and-send.  She is not a programmer and I was a bit surprised at
> their choice.
>

Hmm, I'm actually kind of not. Starting users off with a modal editor (that
starts in command mode, no less!) can be surprising for novices; with
emacs, at least you can start typing text and, well, see text.

I think that one of the smartest things Marc Crispin ever did was write
`pico` to go with `pine`. A simple editor targeted at the novice was really
useful for casual and/or new users, particularly as the Internet spread and
an account on a Unix system was the default introduction to email etc for
so many.

        - Dan C.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-10 17:10       ` Dan Cross
@ 2020-01-10 17:18         ` Steve Nickolas
  2020-01-18  1:55           ` Michael Parson
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Steve Nickolas @ 2020-01-10 17:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dan Cross; +Cc: TUHS main list

On Fri, 10 Jan 2020, Dan Cross wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:39 AM Nemo Nusquam <cym224@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In earlier days, my wife was given email by telnetting to an SGI system
>> and using elm.  One day, I visited her office as she was composing a
>> message.  Intrigued, I asked her what the editor was. She did not know
>> and pointed to her cheat-sheet listing editor commands.  One was ^X^C to
>> exit-and-send.  She is not a programmer and I was a bit surprised at
>> their choice.
>>
>
> Hmm, I'm actually kind of not. Starting users off with a modal editor (that
> starts in command mode, no less!) can be surprising for novices; with
> emacs, at least you can start typing text and, well, see text.

This is one of the reasons I liked E when I first used it: it was modal, 
but it started in edit mode.  (Also you KNEW what mode you were in, which 
I understand isn't always the case with vi, although it usually is in the 
clones iirc?)

> I think that one of the smartest things Marc Crispin ever did was write
> `pico` to go with `pine`. A simple editor targeted at the novice was really
> useful for casual and/or new users, particularly as the Internet spread and
> an account on a Unix system was the default introduction to email etc for
> so many.

And I still use nano - which is a rewrite of pico.

pico Just Works(R)(TM)(C), and it's not enormous.  nano adds a few things 
I like, but the UI is the same.  Heck...I still use PINE and am sending 
this message from it ;)

-uso.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors / machine load
  2020-01-10 15:48         ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-01-10 22:18           ` Adam Thornton
  2020-01-11  0:30             ` Christopher Browne
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Adam Thornton @ 2020-01-10 22:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

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A) The original WD UART chip had very limited buffering.   The timing was
such that as high rates it could not empty accept a second character
without the first being overwritten.  This was a long-standing issue for
many UARTs long in the 1990s.  The original chip NS built and IBM used on
the PC (the NS8250) was notorious for the same problem.  By the time of
Motorola's 6881, it had 8 characters of buffering IIRC.

Great, now I'm having flashbacks to upgrading my 4-port serial card with
16450s and then 16550s in the early 90s.


On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 8:49 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:00 AM Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net> wrote:
>
>> Yes, it was a real concern. Physical memory on the shared PDP-11 was
>> limited, and if everyone had a separate copy of vi running the machine
>> would swap itself silly.
>>
>> This only mattered if everyone had their own separate copy of vi
>> installed. The fix was to put vi in a single system directory, such as
>> /usr/ucb or /exptools. The instruction part of its memory would be
>> shared among all the users, resulting in much less swapping.
>>
> Actually it was much worse than that...
>
> What Mary Ann points out was mostly true of your PDP-11 had DH11's
> installed; which had deeper hardware buffering and 16 character DMA on
> output.   But these were expensive from DEC and also took up a 'full system
> unit' in the CPU for 16 lines.   Until Able (much later) released the
> DMAX-11 (*a.k.a.* DH/DM) product of a DH11 clone on a single board, many
> university sites did not use them; but used multiple DL-11/KL-11's instead.
>
> If your system was configured with DL/KL11s or similar (CMU had it's own
> called 'ASLIs' - a synchronous line interfaces) each character took one
> interrupt for each either input or output.  Moreover, the UARTS that DEC
> used which were made by Western Digital had 2 >>or less<< characters of
> input buffering, so they could drop chars[1].  The ASLI's used a later chip
> with a slightly better buffer IIRC but I admit I've forgotten the details
> (Jim Tetter probably remembers them).
>
> So if you had a single line, the interrupt load was huge on a PDP-11.  For
> this reason, a lot of sites limited glass TTYs to speeds like 2400 or 4800
> baud, not the full 9600.
>
> DEC later released the DZ-11 which worked on units of 8 ports per board.
> Unfortunately, it was not DMA and the buffering was still pretty shallow.
>  Joy did a lot of work on 4.1BSD in the DZ driver to cut down the
> interrupts because 9600 baud DZ lines could swamp a vax and when running
> the BerkNet between systems (before UCB had ethernet), 9600 baud serial
> lines were standard.
>
>
> [1]  Two things
>  A) The original WD UART chip had very limited buffering.   The timing was
> such that as high rates it could not empty accept a second character
> without the first being overwritten.  This was a long-standing issue for
> many UARTs long in the 1990s.  The original chip NS built and IBM used on
> the PC (the NS8250) was notorious for the same problem.  By the time of
> Motorola's 6881, it had 8 characters of buffering IIRC.
>
> B) As I understand the history, Gordon developed the original idea of the
> UART at DEC for the PDP-1. But I'm not sure of the patent details. He does
> not list the UART patent on his web site although he does mention inventing
> it.   I have been under the impression CMU was somehow mixed up in the
> patent and licensing of it, *i.e.* WD got the license from CMU to make
> them not DEC; which was part of why we had the ASLI's.  Again, IIRC, we got
> the UART chips from WD at cost and could make the ALSI's locally much
> cheaper than DL-11s.  >>I think<< the story was that one of Gordon's
> student's designed a chip, which WD fabbed and licensed.  Before that DEC
> had built UARTs on boards from transistors and later logic gates.
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors / machine load
  2020-01-10 22:18           ` Adam Thornton
@ 2020-01-11  0:30             ` Christopher Browne
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Browne @ 2020-01-11  0:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Adam Thornton; +Cc: TUHS main list

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On Fri, 10 Jan 2020 at 17:19, Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:

> A) The original WD UART chip had very limited buffering.   The timing was
> such that as high rates it could not empty accept a second character
> without the first being overwritten.  This was a long-standing issue for
> many UARTs long in the 1990s.  The original chip NS built and IBM used on
> the PC (the NS8250) was notorious for the same problem.  By the time of
> Motorola's 6881, it had 8 characters of buffering IIRC.
>
> Great, now I'm having flashbacks to upgrading my 4-port serial card with
> 16450s and then 16550s in the early 90s.
>

Yep, same sorts of memories here.  I recall the 16450 upgrade being a big
deal for Internet connectivity in that a PC lacking the extra bytes of
buffering in the UART would find that the 80386 was having clock cycles
eaten nearly completely by PPP connections.
It was amazing to realize how a few bytes of memory lurking in a crucial
system interface could affect performance in such dramatic ways.
Tagged command queueing on SCSI controllers had a slightly less dramatic
effect on I/O performance, but again, a few hundred bytes of memory in the
right spot could nevertheless have dramatic effects.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-10  8:17     ` U'll Be King of the Stars
@ 2020-01-11 19:58       ` markus schnalke
  2020-01-11 20:54         ` Derek Fawcus
                           ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: markus schnalke @ 2020-01-11 19:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Hoi.

[2020-01-10 08:17] U'll Be King of the Stars <ullbeking@andrewnesbit.org>
> On 10/01/2020 08:13, markus schnalke wrote:
> >
> > GNU ed [...] seems to be more a demonstration
> > object than actually a programmer's editor.
> 
> Hi Markus, in what way is GNU ed a "demonstration object"?

Thanks for questioning this statement! It seems as if I might have
mixed different memories up. A quick look at GNU ed showed nothing
to support my statement. Sorry for pretending stuff without fact
checking.


My look was at version 1.4, which is the newest one I could look
into. I'm pretty sure I examined GNU ed 1.6 back then, because
that version is in the Pkgfile of my system, but unfortunately I
am unable to find it anywhere. The GNU release mirrors lack all
version 1.5 through 1.10 -- why that? They must have been
released, at least 1.6, because that is used on my system.
Unfortunately I also was unable to access the Changelog of a
newer version to check for changes, because these are lzip
compressed (tar.lz) ... whatever that is, I cannot uncompress it
on my system. Furthermore I neither could find an online
browsable web repo view for checking out version 1.6 or at least
viewing the files within the browser. There's only a cvs repo
access (no cvs on my machine) and it talks about the web page
repo not the ed source repo. Not sure what to think of that.

That's not how things should be. Actually, I'm a bit depressed
now ...


meillo


P.S.
Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do? To me (a
native German speaker) it naturally was ``ed'' (like ``sam'').
As reference some Computerphile video is given, which is now
deleted. Is there a better source?

And what about the pronounciations of `ex' and `qed'?

What about `od'? (That I pronouce ``oh-dee''.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_(text_editor)

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-11 19:58       ` markus schnalke
@ 2020-01-11 20:54         ` Derek Fawcus
  2020-01-11 21:27         ` Henry Bent
  2020-02-04  8:40         ` Sijmen J. Mulder
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Derek Fawcus @ 2020-01-11 20:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

On Sat, Jan 11, 2020 at 08:58:53PM +0100, markus schnalke wrote:
> 
> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do? To me (a
> native German speaker) it naturally was ``ed'' (like ``sam'').

As a native english speaker...

'ed', as in the man's name. I pronounce 'vi' as you have it above,
but others at work pronounce it as 'vye' (as in 'vying'), so no
consistency there.

We also have local inconsistencies for how JIRA is pronounced,
so don't expect a canonical answer.

> And what about the pronounciations of `ex' and `qed'?

I can't say I've pronounced them before, but I think of
former as 'ee-x', I'd be inclined to pronounce the latter
as 'queue-ed'.  Since Q-E-D has its own meaning.

> What about `od'? (That I pronouce ``oh-dee''.)

agreed; otherwise confusing with 'odd'.

But who knows how the authors pronounced them.

DF

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-11 19:58       ` markus schnalke
  2020-01-11 20:54         ` Derek Fawcus
@ 2020-01-11 21:27         ` Henry Bent
  2020-02-04  8:40         ` Sijmen J. Mulder
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Henry Bent @ 2020-01-11 21:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: markus schnalke; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Sat, 11 Jan 2020 at 14:59, markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:

> Hoi.
>
> [2020-01-10 08:17] U'll Be King of the Stars <ullbeking@andrewnesbit.org>
> > On 10/01/2020 08:13, markus schnalke wrote:
> > >
> > > GNU ed [...] seems to be more a demonstration
> > > object than actually a programmer's editor.
> >
> > Hi Markus, in what way is GNU ed a "demonstration object"?
>
> Thanks for questioning this statement! It seems as if I might have
> mixed different memories up. A quick look at GNU ed showed nothing
> to support my statement. Sorry for pretending stuff without fact
> checking.
>
>
> My look was at version 1.4, which is the newest one I could look
> into. I'm pretty sure I examined GNU ed 1.6 back then, because
> that version is in the Pkgfile of my system, but unfortunately I
> am unable to find it anywhere. The GNU release mirrors lack all
> version 1.5 through 1.10 -- why that? They must have been
> released, at least 1.6, because that is used on my system.
> Unfortunately I also was unable to access the Changelog of a
> newer version to check for changes, because these are lzip
> compressed (tar.lz) ... whatever that is, I cannot uncompress it
> on my system. Furthermore I neither could find an online
> browsable web repo view for checking out version 1.6 or at least
> viewing the files within the browser. There's only a cvs repo
> access (no cvs on my machine) and it talks about the web page
> repo not the ed source repo. Not sure what to think of that.
>
> That's not how things should be. Actually, I'm a bit depressed
> now ...
>

GNU ed appears to be written entirely by one person (as in, no changelog
entries by anyone else since 1994), who perhaps not coincidentally is also
the author of the lzip compression program.  As you noted, ed source is
distributed only as lzip-compressed tarballs, so you have to be able to
compile and run lzip to compile and run ed.  lzip is written in C++, so to
have access to GNU ed you need a C++ compiler.  Which is very strange, as
GNU ed is a very simple C program, much as one would expect.

The configure program is extremely basic, which is great - why have more
than you need? - but when it detected that my $(CC) was not gcc, it
hard-coded $(CC) to cc and $(CFLAGS) to -O2, ignoring what I had passed to
the script.  A strange choice, but one that can easily be edited later in
the Makefile.  The basic C source compiled with no warnings whatsoever,
always a good sign.  At the linking stage I noticed that I needed a library
for some functions it wanted.  Okay, easy enough, just add a library to the
Makefile's LDFLAGS.  But the Makefile had this braindamage:

$(progname) : $(objs)
        $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) -o $@ $(objs)

so on any platform that needs libraries linked after objects, it will fail.

At that point, I gave up.  This is clearly one person's pet project and has
"but it works on my Linux box!" written all over it.  That, coupled with
the fact that the GNU folks are willing to endorse something that is solely
distributed in what can only be described as an extremely obscure
compression format, was just too much for me to handle.

-Henry

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-08 22:01   ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-01-17 23:38     ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-01-18  0:07       ` Ryan Casalino
  2020-01-18 23:02       ` greg travis
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-01-17 23:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, Clem Cole wrote:

> Although the famous ? error from the original version was annoying.

Was it Ken or Dennis who thought of a car with but a single alarm 
indicator; "the experienced driver will know what it means".

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-17 23:38     ` Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-01-18  0:07       ` Ryan Casalino
  2020-01-18 23:02       ` greg travis
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Ryan Casalino @ 2020-01-18  0:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

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On Fri, Jan 17, 2020, at 3:38 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, Clem Cole wrote:
> 
> > Although the famous ? error from the original version was annoying.
> 
> Was it Ken or Dennis who thought of a car with but a single alarm 
> indicator; "the experienced driver will know what it means".
> 
> -- Dave
> 

I actually just started using ed for the first time last week (based on one of your earlier comments, Clem) and I couldn't disagree more. 

? is refreshing in its simplicity. Anyway, back to being a fly on the wall. :) 

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-10 17:18         ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2020-01-18  1:55           ` Michael Parson
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Michael Parson @ 2020-01-18  1:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

On Fri, 10 Jan 2020, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jan 2020, Dan Cross wrote:
>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:39 AM Nemo Nusquam <cym224@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> In earlier days, my wife was given email by telnetting to an SGI
>>> system and using elm.  One day, I visited her office as she was
>>> composing a message.  Intrigued, I asked her what the editor
>>> was. She did not know and pointed to her cheat-sheet listing editor
>>> commands.  One was ^X^C to exit-and-send.  She is not a programmer
>>> and I was a bit surprised at their choice.
>>
>>
>> Hmm, I'm actually kind of not. Starting users off with a modal
>> editor (that starts in command mode, no less!) can be surprising for
>> novices; with emacs, at least you can start typing text and, well,
>> see text.
>
> This is one of the reasons I liked E when I first used it: it was
> modal, but it started in edit mode.  (Also you KNEW what mode you were
> in, which I understand isn't always the case with vi, although it
> usually is in the clones iirc?)
>
>> I think that one of the smartest things Marc Crispin ever did was
>> write `pico` to go with `pine`. A simple editor targeted at the
>> novice was really useful for casual and/or new users, particularly as
>> the Internet spread and an account on a Unix system was the default
>> introduction to email etc for so many.
>
> And I still use nano - which is a rewrite of pico.

The 'gnu' version (or maybe just gnu licensed) of pico, cuz there has to
be a 'gnu' licensed of everything :-/

> pico Just Works(R)(TM)(C), and it's not enormous.  nano adds a few things I 
> like, but the UI is the same.  Heck...I still use PINE and am sending this 
> message from it ;)

I used pine for years, now alpine, fingers are as hard wired for moving
around in it as they are for doing things in vi(m).  However, I also
have (al)pine use vi for the message editing. :)

I learned ed a long time ago because I once had some box that would boot
into single-user mode, but not far enough to get any termcap/info stuff
loaded, vi didn't work, ex didn't work, but ed did.  Not too long ago, I
used ed to fix a hosed up passwd file via salt... did something like:

sudo salt some-box cmd.run 'printf "1\n/mparson\ns/foo/bar/\nw\nq\n" | ed /etc/passwd'

I don't remember what exactly was wrong, but it prevented someone from
being able to log in and it wasn't fixable with the 'users' state.
Maybe it was a bad path to root's shell and we couldn't log in on the
console or something.  I've slept since then, lost the details.

The guy watching over my shoulder didn't even know what 'ed' was.

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-17 23:38     ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-01-18  0:07       ` Ryan Casalino
@ 2020-01-18 23:02       ` greg travis
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: greg travis @ 2020-01-18 23:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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'Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the
other numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
driver makes a mistake, a giant “?” lights up in the center of the
dashboard. “The experienced driver,” says Thompson, “will usually know
what’s wrong.”'

On Fri, Jan 17, 2020 at 6:39 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> > Although the famous ? error from the original version was annoying.
>
> Was it Ken or Dennis who thought of a car with but a single alarm
> indicator; "the experienced driver will know what it means".
>
> -- Dave
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors
  2020-01-11 19:58       ` markus schnalke
  2020-01-11 20:54         ` Derek Fawcus
  2020-01-11 21:27         ` Henry Bent
@ 2020-02-04  8:40         ` Sijmen J. Mulder
  2020-02-04 20:14           ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) G. Branden Robinson
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Sijmen J. Mulder @ 2020-02-04  8:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: markus schnalke; +Cc: tuhs

markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do? To me (a
> native German speaker) it naturally was ``ed'' (like ``sam'').
> As reference some Computerphile video is given, which is now
> deleted. Is there a better source?

Dutch speaker.

  ed: Hi Ed
  vi: C'est la vie

Bonus:

  chroot: shroot

These may not be the proper pronunciations but I like the names best
this way.

Sijmen

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was:  screen editors)
  2020-02-04  8:40         ` Sijmen J. Mulder
@ 2020-02-04 20:14           ` G. Branden Robinson
  2020-02-04 21:05             ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-05  8:45             ` arnold
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: G. Branden Robinson @ 2020-02-04 20:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

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At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
> > Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
> > ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?

Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
select that preferentially.

Naming your Unix command "mike" and expecting people to pronounce it
"em-eye-kay-ee" is hopeless.

> Dutch speaker.
> 
>   ed: Hi Ed
>   vi: C'est la vie

In English, thanks to the Great Vowel Shift and other developments that
differentiated vowel pronunciation from the continent a few hundred
years ago, trailing "I"s tend to be pronounced long (as in "eye")--but
they also tend to be rare.  They occur in proper names like Lodi,
California and Bondi, Australia (which Americans sometimes mis-pronounce
anyway, perhaps influenced by Spanish).  A word that looks borrowed from
Latin, Greek, or Spanish will often get back its "-ee" sound for a
trailing "i", but the two-letter command names beloved of the Unix
pioneers offer no etymological hints.

> Bonus:
> 
>   chroot: shroot
> 
> These may not be the proper pronunciations but I like the names best
> this way.

I had to teach myself Unix in the early days and so I wound up with some
idiolectal variants that people consider amusing or objectionable:

chroot: cheroot (like the cigar)
chown: rhymes with "clown"
chmod: rhymes with "god" or "scrod" (a kind of fish), and resists the
       introduction of a vowel into the leading consonant cluster as
       much as possible--it's an ugly one!
creat: Crete (hic Rhodus, hic salta!)
fuser: fuser (like the component of a laser printer--not "eff-user"; eff
       that)
groff: Groff (like the surname, not "jee-roff")
troff: trough (but nroff I pronounce the accepted way)

(And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)

There are a couple of others that I started out pronouncing in a
nonstandard way, but once I started attending conferences, I
assimilated:

Linux: originally "lye-nucks", now "linn-ucks"
Debian: originally "Dee-bee-un", now "Deb-ee-un"

I've heard many other newcomers make the same inferences I did in these
last two cases.

I would editorialize on the fetishization of terseness in textual
interface design[1], but I have to locate my APL typeball.

Regards,
Branden

[1] A terseness that is hurled away with great enthusiasm by the
maintainers of many libraries written in C, who, facing an unanticipated
need, pile yet another damn parameter onto their hapless function calls.
Six, seven parameters?  Keep 'em coming.  Consistency of ordering
between commonly-used arguments in the same library?  Hell no!  Structs
and pointers to structs are only for getting yourself into trouble with.
Remember: always mistrust your compiler and copy a struct element by
element, and only use structure pointers for dangling reference
mischief, never to simplify your function calls.  Always prematurely
optimize except when spilling registers between stack frames on IA-32.
But be sure and -fomit-frame-pointer so your mess is even harder to
clean up!  Every register is precious except the ones you wasted on your
yard-long parameter list.

Guess I got an editorial in after all.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was:  screen editors)
  2020-02-04 20:14           ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) G. Branden Robinson
@ 2020-02-04 21:05             ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-04 21:52               ` Derek Fawcus
  2020-02-05  8:45             ` arnold
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-04 21:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, G. Branden Robinson wrote:

>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
>
> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
> select that preferentially.

Being British/Australian, I say "ee-dee" and "vee-eye", as they are
not really English words.  Similarly, I say "ee-max" etc.

> Naming your Unix command "mike" and expecting people to pronounce it
> "em-eye-kay-ee" is hopeless.

In that case I would pronounce it as "myke".

> In English, thanks to the Great Vowel Shift and other developments that
> differentiated vowel pronunciation from the continent a few hundred
> years ago, trailing "I"s tend to be pronounced long (as in "eye")--but
> they also tend to be rare.  They occur in proper names like Lodi,
> California and Bondi, Australia (which Americans sometimes mis-pronounce
> anyway, perhaps influenced by Spanish).  A word that looks borrowed from
> Latin, Greek, or Spanish will often get back its "-ee" sound for a
> trailing "i", but the two-letter command names beloved of the Unix
> pioneers offer no etymological hints.

You should hear Americans pronounce the Australian cities of Brisbane
and Melbourne.  Also, Wagga Wagga totally throws them (it's pronounced
simly as "Wogguh" here).

> I had to teach myself Unix in the early days and so I wound up with some
> idiolectal variants that people consider amusing or objectionable:

OK...

> chroot: cheroot (like the cigar)
> chown: rhymes with "clown"
> chmod: rhymes with "god" or "scrod" (a kind of fish), and resists the
>       introduction of a vowel into the leading consonant cluster as
>       much as possible--it's an ugly one!

OK so far...

> creat: Crete (hic Rhodus, hic salta!)

cree-AT.

> fuser: fuser (like the component of a laser printer--not "eff-user"; eff
>       that)

eff-user, so take that :-)

> groff: Groff (like the surname, not "jee-roff")

jee-roff.

> troff: trough (but nroff I pronounce the accepted way)

tee-roff.  And, err, how would you pronounce "nroff"?

> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)

Likely "dee-eye-troff".

> There are a couple of others that I started out pronouncing in a
> nonstandard way, but once I started attending conferences, I
> assimilated:
>
> Linux: originally "lye-nucks", now "linn-ucks"

Lee-nux.

> Debian: originally "Dee-bee-un", now "Deb-ee-un"

du-BEE-un.

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was:  screen editors)
  2020-02-04 21:05             ` Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-02-04 21:52               ` Derek Fawcus
  2020-02-04 23:27                 ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Derek Fawcus @ 2020-02-04 21:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, Feb 05, 2020 at 08:05:55AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > troff: trough (but nroff I pronounce the accepted way)
> 
> tee-roff.  And, err, how would you pronounce "nroff"?
> 
> > (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
> 
> Likely "dee-eye-troff".

tee-roff, en-roff, dit-roff

DF

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-04 21:52               ` Derek Fawcus
@ 2020-02-04 23:27                 ` Rob Pike
  2020-02-05  3:34                   ` Warner Losh
                                     ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-02-04 23:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 570 bytes --]

Unix room pronunciation:

ed: Ed or E.D.; both were common
chroot: cheroot
chgrp: ch-group
chown: rhymes with "clone"
chmod: rhymes with "god"
creat: cree-at
nroff: enn-roff (because it was the descendant of roff)
troff: tee-roff
vi: (for those few who used it) V.I. I pronounced it V.I. but often thought
of Roman numerals.

Also a side note about vi: Plan 9 had another program with that name.
http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/vi. The 'v' meant mips for obscure but
consistent reasons. Yet another reason the command was pronounced V.I.
regardless of its function.

-rob

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-04 23:27                 ` Rob Pike
@ 2020-02-05  3:34                   ` Warner Losh
  2020-02-05  9:49                   ` Angelo Papenhoff
  2020-02-05 10:58                   ` Ralph Corderoy
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2020-02-05  3:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 740 bytes --]

On Tue, Feb 4, 2020, 4:28 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

> Unix room pronunciation:
>
> ed: Ed or E.D.; both were common
> chroot: cheroot
> chgrp: ch-group
> chown: rhymes with "clone"
> chmod: rhymes with "god"
> creat: cree-at
> nroff: enn-roff (because it was the descendant of roff)
> troff: tee-roff
> vi: (for those few who used it) V.I. I pronounced it V.I. but often
> thought of Roman numerals.
>

Those match the way I heard them at school in the 80s...

Warner

Also a side note about vi: Plan 9 had another program with that name.
> http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/vi. The 'v' meant mips for obscure but
> consistent reasons. Yet another reason the command was pronounced V.I.
> regardless of its function.
>
> -rob
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was:  screen editors)
  2020-02-04 20:14           ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) G. Branden Robinson
  2020-02-04 21:05             ` Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-02-05  8:45             ` arnold
  2020-02-05 13:35               ` Clem cole
  2020-02-05 19:08               ` Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2020-02-05  8:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs, g.branden.robinson

"G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
> > markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
> > > Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
> > > ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
>
> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
> select that preferentially.

ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
the other two-letter commands.

> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)

I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)

FWIW,

Arnold

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-04 23:27                 ` Rob Pike
  2020-02-05  3:34                   ` Warner Losh
@ 2020-02-05  9:49                   ` Angelo Papenhoff
  2020-02-05 11:40                     ` Rob Pike
  2020-02-05 10:58                   ` Ralph Corderoy
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Angelo Papenhoff @ 2020-02-05  9:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On 05/02/20, Rob Pike wrote:
> Also a side note about vi: Plan 9 had another program with that name.
> http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/vi. The 'v' meant mips for obscure but
> consistent reasons. Yet another reason the command was pronounced V.I.
> regardless of its function.

Actually now i wonder, was there a system behind those characters?
These are all i could find (roughly in order of appearance):
2 68020
8 i386
v mips
k sparc
z hobbit
6 i960
x AT&T 3210
1 68000
9 AMD 29000
q ppc
7 alpha
5 ARM (7500)
6 amd64
9 ppc64
0 mips little endian

There's a '2' in '68020' and an '8' in '386' and maybe i can understand
'k' as sparK, but why is v mips or q powerpc?

aap

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-04 23:27                 ` Rob Pike
  2020-02-05  3:34                   ` Warner Losh
  2020-02-05  9:49                   ` Angelo Papenhoff
@ 2020-02-05 10:58                   ` Ralph Corderoy
  2020-02-05 11:45                     ` Rob Pike
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Ralph Corderoy @ 2020-02-05 10:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Hi Rob,

> nroff: enn-roff (because it was the descendant of roff)
> troff: tee-roff

One I've wondered about for a long time is ditroff.
What was that?

    1.  die-tee-roff
    2.  dee-eye-tee-roff
    3.  ditt-roff
    4.  die-troff
    5.  Something else...

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05  9:49                   ` Angelo Papenhoff
@ 2020-02-05 11:40                     ` Rob Pike
  2020-02-05 11:43                       ` Brantley Coile
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-02-05 11:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Angelo Papenhoff; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 971 bytes --]

Pretty sure q came first and was resurrected later. The system, applied
rigorously, was to pick something that worked without conflict each time.
Ken usually picked.

-rob


On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 8:50 PM Angelo Papenhoff <aap@papnet.eu> wrote:

> On 05/02/20, Rob Pike wrote:
> > Also a side note about vi: Plan 9 had another program with that name.
> > http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/vi. The 'v' meant mips for obscure but
> > consistent reasons. Yet another reason the command was pronounced V.I.
> > regardless of its function.
>
> Actually now i wonder, was there a system behind those characters?
> These are all i could find (roughly in order of appearance):
> 2 68020
> 8 i386
> v mips
> k sparc
> z hobbit
> 6 i960
> x AT&T 3210
> 1 68000
> 9 AMD 29000
> q ppc
> 7 alpha
> 5 ARM (7500)
> 6 amd64
> 9 ppc64
> 0 mips little endian
>
> There's a '2' in '68020' and an '8' in '386' and maybe i can understand
> 'k' as sparK, but why is v mips or q powerpc?
>
> aap
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 11:40                     ` Rob Pike
@ 2020-02-05 11:43                       ` Brantley Coile
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Brantley Coile @ 2020-02-05 11:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

Did the NS32032 have a character? If so, what was it?

 Brantley

> On Feb 5, 2020, at 6:40 AM, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Pretty sure q came first and was resurrected later. The system, applied rigorously, was to pick something that worked without conflict each time. Ken usually picked.
> 
> -rob
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 8:50 PM Angelo Papenhoff <aap@papnet.eu> wrote:
> On 05/02/20, Rob Pike wrote:
> > Also a side note about vi: Plan 9 had another program with that name.
> > http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/vi. The 'v' meant mips for obscure but
> > consistent reasons. Yet another reason the command was pronounced V.I.
> > regardless of its function.
> 
> Actually now i wonder, was there a system behind those characters?
> These are all i could find (roughly in order of appearance):
> 2 68020
> 8 i386
> v mips
> k sparc
> z hobbit
> 6 i960
> x AT&T 3210
> 1 68000
> 9 AMD 29000
> q ppc
> 7 alpha
> 5 ARM (7500)
> 6 amd64
> 9 ppc64
> 0 mips little endian
> 
> There's a '2' in '68020' and an '8' in '386' and maybe i can understand
> 'k' as sparK, but why is v mips or q powerpc?
> 
> aap


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 10:58                   ` Ralph Corderoy
@ 2020-02-05 11:45                     ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-02-05 11:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Ralph Corderoy; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 641 bytes --]

I think we called it troff, because that's what it was. Brian might
remember if it was ever used widely with the prefix. I don't think it was,
within 1127. That spelling doesn't appear anywhere in the Research Unix
manuals for v8, v9, or v10.

-rob


On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 10:06 PM Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk>
wrote:

> Hi Rob,
>
> > nroff: enn-roff (because it was the descendant of roff)
> > troff: tee-roff
>
> One I've wondered about for a long time is ditroff.
> What was that?
>
>     1.  die-tee-roff
>     2.  dee-eye-tee-roff
>     3.  ditt-roff
>     4.  die-troff
>     5.  Something else...
>
> --
> Cheers, Ralph.
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was:  screen editors)
  2020-02-05  8:45             ` arnold
@ 2020-02-05 13:35               ` Clem cole
  2020-02-05 16:11                 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
                                   ` (2 more replies)
  2020-02-05 19:08               ` Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 3 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Clem cole @ 2020-02-05 13:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: arnold; +Cc: tuhs

FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk” (rhymes with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit I smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was not considered the proper pronunciation.

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

> On Feb 5, 2020, at 3:45 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> 
> "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
>>> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
>>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
>>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
>> 
>> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
>> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
>> select that preferentially.
> 
> ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
> the other two-letter commands.
> 
>> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
> 
> I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)
> 
> FWIW,
> 
> Arnold

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-05 13:35               ` Clem cole
@ 2020-02-05 16:11                 ` Arthur Krewat
  2020-02-05 16:16                   ` Clem Cole
  2020-02-05 19:37                 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-05 20:50                 ` Rob Pike
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Arthur Krewat @ 2020-02-05 16:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Bunch of guys at Computer Graphics Lab (at New York Institute of 
Technology) back in the 80's used to call it "f-suck".



On 2/5/2020 8:35 AM, Clem cole wrote:
> FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk” (rhymes with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit I smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was not considered the proper pronunciation.
>
> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite.
>
>> On Feb 5, 2020, at 3:45 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
>>
>> "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
>>>> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
>>>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
>>>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
>>> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
>>> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
>>> select that preferentially.
>> ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
>> the other two-letter commands.
>>
>>> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
>> I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)
>>
>> FWIW,
>>
>> Arnold
>


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-05 16:11                 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
@ 2020-02-05 16:16                   ` Clem Cole
  2020-02-05 17:05                     ` Jon Steinhart
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-02-05 16:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Arthur Krewat; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1521 bytes --]

definitely a diminutive term.

On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 11:11 AM Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net> wrote:

> Bunch of guys at Computer Graphics Lab (at New York Institute of
> Technology) back in the 80's used to call it "f-suck".
>
>
>
> On 2/5/2020 8:35 AM, Clem cole wrote:
> > FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk”
> (rhymes with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I
> admit I smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was
> not considered the proper pronunciation.
> >
> > Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
> quite.
> >
> >> On Feb 5, 2020, at 3:45 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> >>
> >> "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
> >>>> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
> >>>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
> >>>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
> >>> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
> >>> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
> >>> select that preferentially.
> >> ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
> >> the other two-letter commands.
> >>
> >>> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
> >> I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)
> >>
> >> FWIW,
> >>
> >> Arnold
> >
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-05 16:16                   ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-02-05 17:05                     ` Jon Steinhart
  2020-02-05 17:09                       ` Clem Cole
  2020-02-05 20:26                       ` David Arnold
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Jon Steinhart @ 2020-02-05 17:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

Clem Cole writes:
> definitely a diminutive term.   
> 
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 11:11 AM Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net> wrote:
> 
>     Bunch of guys at Computer Graphics Lab (at New York Institute of
>     Technology) back in the 80's used to call it "f-suck".
> 
>     On 2/5/2020 8:35 AM, Clem cole wrote:
>     > FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk” (rhymes
>     with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit I
>     smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was not
>     considered the proper pronunciation.

I always pronounced it "fisk" and am happy that newer
filesystems have minimized the need for a stop-and-fisk policy.

Jon

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-05 17:05                     ` Jon Steinhart
@ 2020-02-05 17:09                       ` Clem Cole
  2020-02-08  3:31                         ` Ronald Natalie
  2020-02-05 20:26                       ` David Arnold
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-02-05 17:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jon Steinhart; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 882 bytes --]

indeed.

On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 12:06 PM Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> wrote:

> Clem Cole writes:
> > definitely a diminutive term.
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 11:11 AM Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >     Bunch of guys at Computer Graphics Lab (at New York Institute of
> >     Technology) back in the 80's used to call it "f-suck".
> >
> >     On 2/5/2020 8:35 AM, Clem cole wrote:
> >     > FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk”
> (rhymes
> >     with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I
> admit I
> >     smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was
> not
> >     considered the proper pronunciation.
>
> I always pronounced it "fisk" and am happy that newer
> filesystems have minimized the need for a stop-and-fisk policy.
>
> Jon
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was:  screen editors)
  2020-02-05  8:45             ` arnold
  2020-02-05 13:35               ` Clem cole
@ 2020-02-05 19:08               ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-05 21:01                 ` Nemo
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-05 19:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[ Did not see the OP's post ]

> "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
>> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
>> select that preferentially.

Yours might but mine doesn't so please don't generalise.  At my age
(67) and computer experience (nearly 50 years) I take things like
context into account and don't anthropomorphise things.

[ Arnold ]

> ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
> the other two-letter commands.

Which is what I call them.

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was:  screen editors)
  2020-02-05 13:35               ` Clem cole
  2020-02-05 16:11                 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
@ 2020-02-05 19:37                 ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-05 19:57                   ` Clem Cole
  2020-02-05 20:50                 ` Rob Pike
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-05 19:37 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 400 bytes --]

On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, Clem cole wrote:

> FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk” 
> (rhymes with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears. 
> I admit I smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but 
> that was not considered the proper pronunciation.

I've heard it pronounced as "fuzz-chuck" (!).  Me, it's eff-ess-see-kay.

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 19:37                 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-02-05 19:57                   ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-02-05 19:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 756 bytes --]

On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 2:38 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, Clem cole wrote:
>
> > FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk”
> > (rhymes with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.
> > I admit I smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but
> > that was not considered the proper pronunciation.
>
> I've heard it pronounced as "fuzz-chuck" (!).

sigh...



> Me, it's eff-ess-see-kay.

Yeah, that's one's acceptable and as I said above, doesn't bother me.
However, fisk is the 'one true' way ;-)  I can see where people came from
often by what they call things.

That said, the program long left the barn and has its own history.

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* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-05 17:05                     ` Jon Steinhart
  2020-02-05 17:09                       ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-02-05 20:26                       ` David Arnold
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: David Arnold @ 2020-02-05 20:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

The group I Unix with pronounce it fiss-ick, falling back to f-s-c-k if that provokes a blank stare. 



d


> On 6 Feb 2020, at 04:07, Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> wrote:
> 
> Clem Cole writes:
>> definitely a diminutive term.   
>> 
>> On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 11:11 AM Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net> wrote:
>> 
>>    Bunch of guys at Computer Graphics Lab (at New York Institute of
>>    Technology) back in the 80's used to call it "f-suck".
>> 
>>>    On 2/5/2020 8:35 AM, Clem cole wrote:
>>> FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk” (rhymes
>>    with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit I
>>    smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was not
>>    considered the proper pronunciation.
> 
> I always pronounced it "fisk" and am happy that newer
> filesystems have minimized the need for a stop-and-fisk policy.
> 
> Jon


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 13:35               ` Clem cole
  2020-02-05 16:11                 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
  2020-02-05 19:37                 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-02-05 20:50                 ` Rob Pike
  2020-02-05 21:43                   ` Clem Cole
                                     ` (3 more replies)
  2 siblings, 4 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-02-05 20:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1503 bytes --]

Frodo (Ted Kowalski) told me it was originally spelled, and pronounced,
fuck, for good reason, but he soon realized it was going to be used by
others and changed one letter. It was just letters after that.

-rob


On Thu, Feb 6, 2020 at 1:34 AM Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk” (rhymes
> with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit I
> smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was not
> considered the proper pronunciation.
>
> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
> quite.
>
> > On Feb 5, 2020, at 3:45 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> >
> > "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
> >>> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
> >>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
> >>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
> >>
> >> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
> >> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
> >> select that preferentially.
> >
> > ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
> > the other two-letter commands.
> >
> >> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
> >
> > I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)
> >
> > FWIW,
> >
> > Arnold
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 19:08               ` Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-02-05 21:01                 ` Nemo
  2020-02-05 22:06                   ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Nemo @ 2020-02-05 21:01 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On 05/02/2020, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote (in part):
>> ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
>> the other two-letter commands.
>
> Which is what I call them.

Well, I am clearly the odd-ball here.  I spoke them "long-hand" (as in
remove, link, move, change-mode, ...).  Others copied but only once
did a young 'un start typing c-h-a-n ...

N.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 20:50                 ` Rob Pike
@ 2020-02-05 21:43                   ` Clem Cole
  2020-02-05 21:59                   ` Steve Nickolas
                                     ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-02-05 21:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1685 bytes --]

Yup.

On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 12:51 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

> Frodo (Ted Kowalski) told me it was originally spelled, and pronounced,
> fuck, for good reason, but he soon realized it was going to be used by
> others and changed one letter. It was just letters after that.
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 6, 2020 at 1:34 AM Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk” (rhymes
>> with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit I
>> smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was not
>> considered the proper pronunciation.
>>
>> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
>> quite.
>>
>> > On Feb 5, 2020, at 3:45 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
>> >
>> > "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
>> >>> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
>> >>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
>> >>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
>> >>
>> >> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
>> >> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
>> >> select that preferentially.
>> >
>> > ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
>> > the other two-letter commands.
>> >
>> >> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
>> >
>> > I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)
>> >
>> > FWIW,
>> >
>> > Arnold
>>
> --
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 20:50                 ` Rob Pike
  2020-02-05 21:43                   ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-02-05 21:59                   ` Steve Nickolas
  2020-02-05 22:22                   ` Ed Carp
  2020-02-06  2:23                   ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dan Cross
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Steve Nickolas @ 2020-02-05 21:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, Rob Pike wrote:

> Frodo (Ted Kowalski) told me it was originally spelled, and pronounced,
> fuck, for good reason, but he soon realized it was going to be used by
> others and changed one letter. It was just letters after that.

And now in some circles it's a euphemism for "fuck" ;)

-uso.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 21:01                 ` Nemo
@ 2020-02-05 22:06                   ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-05 22:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, Nemo wrote:

> Well, I am clearly the odd-ball here.  I spoke them "long-hand" (as in 
> remove, link, move, change-mode, ...).  Others copied but only once did 
> a young 'un start typing c-h-a-n ...

Hey, this is Unix; we're all odd-balls here :-)

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 20:50                 ` Rob Pike
  2020-02-05 21:43                   ` Clem Cole
  2020-02-05 21:59                   ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2020-02-05 22:22                   ` Ed Carp
  2020-02-06  2:43                     ` Dan Cross
  2020-02-06  2:23                   ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dan Cross
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Ed Carp @ 2020-02-05 22:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

Sex the UNIX way
# unzip
# strip
# touch
# finger
# mount
# fsck
# more
# yes
# umount
# sleep

On 2/5/20, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> Frodo (Ted Kowalski) told me it was originally spelled, and pronounced,
> fuck, for good reason, but he soon realized it was going to be used by
> others and changed one letter. It was just letters after that.
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 6, 2020 at 1:34 AM Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk” (rhymes
>> with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit
>> I
>> smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was not
>> considered the proper pronunciation.
>>
>> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
>> quite.
>>
>> > On Feb 5, 2020, at 3:45 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
>> >
>> > "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
>> >>> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
>> >>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
>> >>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
>> >>
>> >> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
>> >> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
>> >> select that preferentially.
>> >
>> > ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
>> > the other two-letter commands.
>> >
>> >> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
>> >
>> > I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)
>> >
>> > FWIW,
>> >
>> > Arnold
>>
>

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 20:50                 ` Rob Pike
                                     ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2020-02-05 22:22                   ` Ed Carp
@ 2020-02-06  2:23                   ` Dan Cross
  2020-02-06  2:31                     ` Dave Horsfall
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2020-02-06  2:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1816 bytes --]

On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 3:52 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

> Frodo (Ted Kowalski) told me it was originally spelled, and pronounced,
> fuck, for good reason, but he soon realized it was going to be used by
> others and changed one letter. It was just letters after that.
>

Very often the novice Unix users learns how `rm -rf` works the hard way.
I've always preferred the spelling, `rm -fr` where I tell people that the
`fr` bit means, "fuck recursively."

        - Dan C.

On Thu, Feb 6, 2020 at 1:34 AM Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk” (rhymes
>> with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit I
>> smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was not
>> considered the proper pronunciation.
>>
>> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
>> quite.
>>
>> > On Feb 5, 2020, at 3:45 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
>> >
>> > "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
>> >>> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
>> >>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
>> >>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
>> >>
>> >> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
>> >> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
>> >> select that preferentially.
>> >
>> > ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
>> > the other two-letter commands.
>> >
>> >> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
>> >
>> > I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)
>> >
>> > FWIW,
>> >
>> > Arnold
>>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-06  2:23                   ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dan Cross
@ 2020-02-06  2:31                     ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-06  2:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, Dan Cross wrote:

> Very often the novice Unix users learns how `rm -rf` works the hard way. 
> I've always preferred the spelling, `rm -fr` where I tell people that 
> the `fr` bit means, "fuck recursively."

Yep, that's the thing everyone has to do once; just like:

     % rm * .o
     rm: .o: No such file or directory
     % ls
     %

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-05 22:22                   ` Ed Carp
@ 2020-02-06  2:43                     ` Dan Cross
  2020-02-06  3:00                       ` Larry McVoy
  2020-02-06 19:55                       ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2020-02-06  2:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Ed Carp; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4447 bytes --]

On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 5:23 PM Ed Carp <erc@pobox.com> wrote:

> Sex the UNIX way
> [...]
> # finger
> [...]
>

Perhaps I've sent this story to TUHS before, but I can't resist.  "finger:
the most inappropriately named command in computerdom" (no, that's not a
challenge...).

When I was in high school I was stealing, er, I mean, borrowing computer
time from the local university.  It wasn't quite as criminal as I make it
sound; I was decently well known around campus, folks tolerated my presence
admirably and as informal payment for the computer time, I did a lot of
unpaid sysadmin work.

Anyway, this was the early 90s and the university was starting to give
email accounts to pretty much everyone. What this meant was that there was
a server somewhere running sendmail that accepted incoming mail, and a POP3
server that you could connect to to download that mail. There were
self-service computer labs around campus connected to the university
network, and the `finger` service on the main campus machine was backed by
a database that responded to a crude, limited query syntax. Notably, you
could finger your own first and last name (in quotes) and get some data
about your account, including your login name (most of which were of the
form abc123 because ... university bureaucracy). However, the university
wasn't all that great about telling people any of this stuff...word had
gotten out that everyone had an email account, but not how to go about
getting your login information, etc. They certainly never mentioned the
"finger" command.

Of course, among the computer types, using 'finger' was par for the course.
"Hey, you going to be online later?" "Yeah, just finger me over at the math
department." Etc.

One day I was hanging around near the helpdesk when a young woman, a
graduate student, came in to ask about her account details. The student on
duty at the time, in a very helpful, cheerful voice said, "oh, that's easy!
Just finger yourself!" (Oh context, you are everything...).

Jaws dropped. Stunned silence ensued. The student working the helpdesk,
suddenly looking approximately like he might die, managed to awkwardly
stammer out something about "the the the finger command" and "I mean, uh,
I'm not saying that YOU should, like, you know... I mean, I don't mean
THAT...and, uh...I'm just making it worse, aren't I? Here, this will all
make so much more sense if I just show you what I mean. On the computer! I
mean...just let me type this thing...er, what's your name?"

The graduate student left a few minutes later with her login details. So
far as I know, no one got fired. In the end I think everyone had a good
laugh, grad student included.

        - Dan C.

On 2/5/20, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Frodo (Ted Kowalski) told me it was originally spelled, and pronounced,
> > fuck, for good reason, but he soon realized it was going to be used by
> > others and changed one letter. It was just letters after that.
> >
> > -rob
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 6, 2020 at 1:34 AM Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> >
> >> FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as “fisk”
> (rhymes
> >> with “disk”), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit
> >> I
> >> smiled one time when I heard some one call it “f-sick” but that was not
> >> considered the proper pronunciation.
> >>
> >> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
> >> quite.
> >>
> >> > On Feb 5, 2020, at 3:45 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> >> >
> >> > "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
> >> >>> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
> >> >>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
> >> >>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
> >> >>
> >> >> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
> >> >> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
> >> >> select that preferentially.
> >> >
> >> > ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
> >> > the other two-letter commands.
> >> >
> >> >> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
> >> >
> >> > I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)
> >> >
> >> > FWIW,
> >> >
> >> > Arnold
> >>
> >
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-06  2:43                     ` Dan Cross
@ 2020-02-06  3:00                       ` Larry McVoy
  2020-02-06  5:20                         ` Vincenzo Nicosia
  2020-02-06 19:55                       ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2020-02-06  3:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dan Cross; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

That's awesome.  And finger, back in the days of innocence before scammers
and viruses and black hat hackers, was super useful.  I hacked my finger
server to do all sorts of stuff, it was sort of ftp/ps/who and who knows
what else in one.

I miss the days when finger was a thing.  Perhaps poorly named (perhaps
not), whatever, it was simpler time.

On Wed, Feb 05, 2020 at 09:43:33PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 5:23 PM Ed Carp <erc@pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> > Sex the UNIX way
> > [...]
> > # finger
> > [...]
> >
> 
> Perhaps I've sent this story to TUHS before, but I can't resist.  "finger:
> the most inappropriately named command in computerdom" (no, that's not a
> challenge...).
> 
> When I was in high school I was stealing, er, I mean, borrowing computer
> time from the local university.  It wasn't quite as criminal as I make it
> sound; I was decently well known around campus, folks tolerated my presence
> admirably and as informal payment for the computer time, I did a lot of
> unpaid sysadmin work.
> 
> Anyway, this was the early 90s and the university was starting to give
> email accounts to pretty much everyone. What this meant was that there was
> a server somewhere running sendmail that accepted incoming mail, and a POP3
> server that you could connect to to download that mail. There were
> self-service computer labs around campus connected to the university
> network, and the `finger` service on the main campus machine was backed by
> a database that responded to a crude, limited query syntax. Notably, you
> could finger your own first and last name (in quotes) and get some data
> about your account, including your login name (most of which were of the
> form abc123 because ... university bureaucracy). However, the university
> wasn't all that great about telling people any of this stuff...word had
> gotten out that everyone had an email account, but not how to go about
> getting your login information, etc. They certainly never mentioned the
> "finger" command.
> 
> Of course, among the computer types, using 'finger' was par for the course.
> "Hey, you going to be online later?" "Yeah, just finger me over at the math
> department." Etc.
> 
> One day I was hanging around near the helpdesk when a young woman, a
> graduate student, came in to ask about her account details. The student on
> duty at the time, in a very helpful, cheerful voice said, "oh, that's easy!
> Just finger yourself!" (Oh context, you are everything...).
> 
> Jaws dropped. Stunned silence ensued. The student working the helpdesk,
> suddenly looking approximately like he might die, managed to awkwardly
> stammer out something about "the the the finger command" and "I mean, uh,
> I'm not saying that YOU should, like, you know... I mean, I don't mean
> THAT...and, uh...I'm just making it worse, aren't I? Here, this will all
> make so much more sense if I just show you what I mean. On the computer! I
> mean...just let me type this thing...er, what's your name?"
> 
> The graduate student left a few minutes later with her login details. So
> far as I know, no one got fired. In the end I think everyone had a good
> laugh, grad student included.
> 
>         - Dan C.
> 
> On 2/5/20, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Frodo (Ted Kowalski) told me it was originally spelled, and pronounced,
> > > fuck, for good reason, but he soon realized it was going to be used by
> > > others and changed one letter. It was just letters after that.
> > >
> > > -rob
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, Feb 6, 2020 at 1:34 AM Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> FWIW. When it was written, Ted and I used pronounced it as ???fisk???
> > (rhymes
> > >> with ???disk???), but F. S. C. K. was always acceptable to my ears.  I admit
> > >> I
> > >> smiled one time when I heard some one call it ???f-sick??? but that was not
> > >> considered the proper pronunciation.
> > >>
> > >> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
> > >> quite.
> > >>
> > >> > On Feb 5, 2020, at 3:45 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> > >> >
> > >> > "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> >
> > >> >> At 2020-02-04T09:40:18+0100, Sijmen J. Mulder wrote:
> > >> >>> markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
> > >> >>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
> > >> >>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
> > >> >>
> > >> >> Certainly not.  When one sees a command name that duplicates a
> > >> >> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
> > >> >> select that preferentially.
> > >> >
> > >> > ISTR thinking of it and calling it e-d, along with r-m, l-n, m-v and
> > >> > the other two-letter commands.
> > >> >
> > >> >> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
> > >> >
> > >> > I did ... Although it's "groff" and not "g-roff". :-)
> > >> >
> > >> > FWIW,
> > >> >
> > >> > Arnold
> > >>
> > >
> >

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-06  3:00                       ` Larry McVoy
@ 2020-02-06  5:20                         ` Vincenzo Nicosia
  2020-02-06 14:54                           ` Richard Salz
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Vincenzo Nicosia @ 2020-02-06  5:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, Feb 05, 2020 at 07:00:44PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> That's awesome.  And finger, back in the days of innocence before scammers
> and viruses and black hat hackers, was super useful.  I hacked my finger
> server to do all sorts of stuff, it was sort of ftp/ps/who and who knows
> what else in one.
> 
> I miss the days when finger was a thing.  Perhaps poorly named (perhaps
> not), whatever, it was simpler time.
> 

Just to mention that finger is *still* a thing in many modern pubnix
systems, such as circumlunar.space or tildeverse.

My2Cents

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-06  5:20                         ` Vincenzo Nicosia
@ 2020-02-06 14:54                           ` Richard Salz
  2020-02-06 15:10                             ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Lars Brinkhoff
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Richard Salz @ 2020-02-06 14:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Vincenzo Nicosia; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 25 bytes --]

The name comes from ITS.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 72 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-06 14:54                           ` Richard Salz
@ 2020-02-06 15:10                             ` Lars Brinkhoff
  2020-02-06 20:14                               ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-02-06 15:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Richard Salz; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

Richard Salz wrote:
> The name comes from ITS.

It was first invented by Les Earnest at SAIL.

https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/

"1972 Social networking and blogging service (FINGER) was initially just
for SAIL but became a network service in 1975, "

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-06  2:43                     ` Dan Cross
  2020-02-06  3:00                       ` Larry McVoy
@ 2020-02-06 19:55                       ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-06 21:48                         ` Michael Parson
                                           ` (2 more replies)
  1 sibling, 3 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-06 19:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 904 bytes --]

On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, Dan Cross wrote:

> Perhaps I've sent this story to TUHS before, but I can't resist.  
> "finger: the most inappropriately named command in computerdom" (no, 
> that's not a challenge...).

[ Hilarious story ]

Back in ye olde Usenet days, someone had an animated .plan which was all 
about the "Andalusian snail" (the "@" character was the snail).  It used 
ANSI escape sequences, showing it in the 25th line (the "status" line), 
and was quite funny.

Of course, you had to have the right speed; too fast, and it just zipped 
past, and too slow, well, it, just crawled along :-)  ISTR that 9600 was 
about right.

Anyone remember that?

Oh, my .plan in those days said "To rid the world of Intel chips" (sorry 
Clem, but this was back in the days of Intel vs. Moto).  It now reads "To 
rid the world of M$ software" but these days the finger service is 
generally blocked.

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-06 15:10                             ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Lars Brinkhoff
@ 2020-02-06 20:14                               ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-06 20:20                                 ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-06 20:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:

> "1972 Social networking and blogging service (FINGER) was initially just 
> for SAIL but became a network service in 1975, "

Blogs were in use in 1972?

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-06 20:14                               ` Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-02-06 20:20                                 ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2020-02-06 20:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 449 bytes --]

On Thu, Feb 6, 2020 at 1:14 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
>
> > "1972 Social networking and blogging service (FINGER) was initially just
> > for SAIL but became a network service in 1975, "
>
> Blogs were in use in 1972?
>

Finger would tell you what people had just done, and what they planned to
do... So in a sense that's true, but it's a big stretch based on today's
meaning...

Warner

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 848 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-06 19:55                       ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-02-06 21:48                         ` Michael Parson
  2020-02-06 23:56                           ` Michael Parson
  2020-02-06 22:17                         ` Clem Cole
  2020-02-07  0:21                         ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Michael Parson @ 2020-02-06 21:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Fri, 7 Feb 2020, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, Dan Cross wrote:
>
>> Perhaps I've sent this story to TUHS before, but I can't resist. 
>> "finger: the most inappropriately named command in computerdom" (no,
>> that's not a challenge...).
>
> [ Hilarious story ]
>
> Back in ye olde Usenet days, someone had an animated .plan which was
> all about the "Andalusian snail" (the "@" character was the snail).
> It used ANSI escape sequences, showing it in the 25th line (the
> "status" line), and was quite funny.
>
> Of course, you had to have the right speed; too fast, and it just
> zipped past, and too slow, well, it, just crawled along :-) ISTR that
> 9600 was about right.
>
> Anyone remember that?

I loved ascii animations back the day, collected a bunch of them,
including the one about the Andalusion Video Snail @/

http://bl.org/~mparson/ascii-anim/

There's a perl script in there for 'slowcat' to print them out slower.

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-06 19:55                       ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-06 21:48                         ` Michael Parson
@ 2020-02-06 22:17                         ` Clem Cole
  2020-02-07  0:21                         ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-02-06 22:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1314 bytes --]

No worries Dave.  I was a die hard moto fan.  And I’m the first to tell you
the Intel ISA is wretched. But what I have learned is that it does not
matter.  They are all dataflow systems internally at this point.

On Thu, Feb 6, 2020 at 11:56 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, Dan Cross wrote:
>
> > Perhaps I've sent this story to TUHS before, but I can't resist.
> > "finger: the most inappropriately named command in computerdom" (no,
> > that's not a challenge...).
>
> [ Hilarious story ]
>
> Back in ye olde Usenet days, someone had an animated .plan which was all
> about the "Andalusian snail" (the "@" character was the snail).  It used
> ANSI escape sequences, showing it in the 25th line (the "status" line),
> and was quite funny.
>
> Of course, you had to have the right speed; too fast, and it just zipped
> past, and too slow, well, it, just crawled along :-)  ISTR that 9600 was
> about right.
>
> Anyone remember that?
>
> Oh, my .plan in those days said "To rid the world of Intel chips" (sorry
> Clem, but this was back in the days of Intel vs. Moto).  It now reads "To
> rid the world of M$ software" but these days the finger service is
> generally blocked.
>
> -- Dave

-- 
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1815 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
  2020-02-06 21:48                         ` Michael Parson
@ 2020-02-06 23:56                           ` Michael Parson
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Michael Parson @ 2020-02-06 23:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, Michael Parson wrote:

<snip>

> I loved ascii animations back the day, collected a bunch of them,
> including the one about the Andalusion Video Snail @/
>
> http://bl.org/~mparson/ascii-anim/
>
> There's a perl script in there for 'slowcat' to print them out slower.

I've fixed the perms.  Sorry 'bout that.

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors))
  2020-02-06 19:55                       ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-06 21:48                         ` Michael Parson
  2020-02-06 22:17                         ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-02-07  0:21                         ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2020-02-07  0:27                           ` Steve Nickolas
  2020-02-07  4:23                           ` Dave Horsfall
  2 siblings, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey @ 2020-02-07  0:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 711 bytes --]

On Friday,  7 February 2020 at  6:55:28 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>
> Oh, my .plan in those days said "To rid the world of Intel chips"
> (sorry Clem, but this was back in the days of Intel vs. Moto).  It
> now reads "To rid the world of M$ software" but these days the
> finger service is generally blocked.

It is?  My .sig (not modified for this answer) includes a finger
reference, and "it works for me".  Do some services block incoming
fingers?

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@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

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors))
  2020-02-07  0:21                         ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
@ 2020-02-07  0:27                           ` Steve Nickolas
  2020-02-07  0:54                             ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
  2020-02-07  4:31                             ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-07  4:23                           ` Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Steve Nickolas @ 2020-02-07  0:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Fri, 7 Feb 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> On Friday,  7 February 2020 at  6:55:28 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>>
>> Oh, my .plan in those days said "To rid the world of Intel chips"
>> (sorry Clem, but this was back in the days of Intel vs. Moto).  It
>> now reads "To rid the world of M$ software" but these days the
>> finger service is generally blocked.
>
> It is?  My .sig (not modified for this answer) includes a finger
> reference, and "it works for me".  Do some services block incoming
> fingers?
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog@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
>

I have Debian installed in the Linux emulation environment on my main 
computer (as well as on my other desktop), so I decided to try running the 
finger command from your .sig ;p

Works fine on my end.  (It's supposed to end in "20Segmentation fault 
(core dumped)", right?)

I have never tried to install a finger daemon on any of my boxen so as to 
permit being able to receive incoming finger requests.  Just hasn't been 
important enough to me.

-uso.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-07  0:27                           ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2020-02-07  0:54                             ` Arthur Krewat
  2020-02-07  1:00                               ` Richard Salz
  2020-02-07  5:26                               ` Peter Jeremy
  2020-02-07  4:31                             ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Arthur Krewat @ 2020-02-07  0:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs


On 2/6/2020 7:27 PM, Steve Nickolas wrote:
>
> I have Debian installed in the Linux emulation environment on my main 
> computer (as well as on my other desktop), so I decided to try running 
> the finger command from your .sig ;p
>
> Works fine on my end.  (It's supposed to end in "20Segmentation fault 
> (core dumped)", right?)
>
> I have never tried to install a finger daemon on any of my boxen so as 
> to permit being able to receive incoming finger requests. Just hasn't 
> been important enough to me.

Same here, using Solaris 11.3

medusa<@:1>% finger grog@lemis.com
[lemis.com]
Login: grog                             Name: Greg 'groggy' Lehey
Directory: /home/grog                   Shell: /usr/local/bin/bash
Office:  Dereel VIC,  +61-3-5346-1370
Mail last read Sat Nov  9 05:06 2019 (UTC)
Project:
Home page:  http://www.lemis.com/grog/

PGP public key:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (FreeBSD)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

<SNIP>

-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Plan:
2020: Dereel
2021: Goldfields
2022: Victoria
2023: Australia
2024: The world
20Segmentation fault (core dumped)
medusa<@:1>% uname -a
SunOS medusa 5.11 11.3 i86pc i386 i86pc
medusa<@:1>% pkg info entire
              Name: entire
           Summary: entire incorporation including Support Repository 
Update (Oracle Solaris 11.3.9.4.0).
       Description: This package constrains system package versions to 
the same
                    build.  WARNING: Proper system update and correct 
package
                    selection depend on the presence of this incorporation.
                    Removing this package will result in an unsupported 
system.
                    For more information see:
https://support.oracle.com/rs?type=doc&id=2045311.1
          Category: Meta Packages/Incorporations
             State: Installed
         Publisher: solaris
           Version: 0.5.11 (Oracle Solaris 11.3.9.4.0)
     Build Release: 5.11
            Branch: 0.175.3.9.0.4.0
    Packaging Date: June 10, 2016 12:51:48 AM
              Size: 5.46 kB
              FMRI: 
pkg://solaris/entire@0.5.11,5.11-0.175.3.9.0.4.0:20160610T005148Z



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-07  0:54                             ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
@ 2020-02-07  1:00                               ` Richard Salz
  2020-02-07  5:26                               ` Peter Jeremy
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Richard Salz @ 2020-02-07  1:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Arthur Krewat; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 96 bytes --]

Almost anyone behind a corporate firewall will not allow incoming port 29
(finger) connections.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 121 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors))
  2020-02-07  0:21                         ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2020-02-07  0:27                           ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2020-02-07  4:23                           ` Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-07  4:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Fri, 7 Feb 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

>> Oh, my .plan in those days said "To rid the world of Intel chips"
>> (sorry Clem, but this was back in the days of Intel vs. Moto).  It
>> now reads "To rid the world of M$ software" but these days the
>> finger service is generally blocked.
>
> It is?  My .sig (not modified for this answer) includes a finger
> reference, and "it works for me".  Do some services block incoming
> fingers?

Depends on the firewall, of course; I block it here (or rather, I don't
allow it).  You'll find my PGP stuff in the headers, for example.

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors))
  2020-02-07  0:27                           ` Steve Nickolas
  2020-02-07  0:54                             ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
@ 2020-02-07  4:31                             ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-07  5:07                               ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-07  4:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, Steve Nickolas wrote:

> Works fine on my end.  (It's supposed to end in "20Segmentation fault 
> (core dumped)", right?)

I suspect that Greg is having a little fun :-)  Did you get a core dump?

Now I'm wondering what timebomb is in the year 2025...

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors))
  2020-02-07  4:31                             ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Dave Horsfall
@ 2020-02-07  5:07                               ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2020-02-07  5:39                                 ` Steve Nickolas
                                                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey @ 2020-02-07  5:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 626 bytes --]

On Friday,  7 February 2020 at 15:31:28 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, Steve Nickolas wrote:
>
>> Works fine on my end.  (It's supposed to end in "20Segmentation fault
>> (core dumped)", right?)

Funny, I didn't get Steve's message.

Clearly the obvious check is

 $ echo $?

But over the years I've been surprised how many people have been fooled.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@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

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-07  0:54                             ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
  2020-02-07  1:00                               ` Richard Salz
@ 2020-02-07  5:26                               ` Peter Jeremy
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Peter Jeremy @ 2020-02-07  5:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Arthur Krewat; +Cc: tuhs

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 380 bytes --]

On 2020-Feb-06 19:54:13 -0500, Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net> wrote:
>medusa<@:1>% finger grog@lemis.com
...
>
>PGP public key:

My mutt fed the section marked as being a public key (which actually just
contained <SNIP> into gpg, which got rather confused.  A danger of hand-
edited data inside "magic" headers that flag it as a type of content.

-- 
Peter Jeremy

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 963 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors))
  2020-02-07  5:07                               ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
@ 2020-02-07  5:39                                 ` Steve Nickolas
  2020-02-07 21:39                                   ` Dave Horsfall
  2020-02-07 16:14                                 ` Arthur Krewat
  2020-02-07 22:37                                 ` Dave Horsfall
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Steve Nickolas @ 2020-02-07  5:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Fri, 7 Feb 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> On Friday,  7 February 2020 at 15:31:28 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, Steve Nickolas wrote:
>>
>>> Works fine on my end.  (It's supposed to end in "20Segmentation fault
>>> (core dumped)", right?)
>
> Funny, I didn't get Steve's message.

Remangled the header so it only goes to the list, so the list should 
handle passing it on. ;p

Your mailserver rejected the message from my server (frieza.hoshinet.org).

> Clearly the obvious check is
>
> $ echo $?

I did "ls -tr" to check for a coredump. ;p

> But over the years I've been surprised how many people have been fooled.
>
> Greg

-uso.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors))
  2020-02-07  5:07                               ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2020-02-07  5:39                                 ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2020-02-07 16:14                                 ` Arthur Krewat
  2020-02-07 22:37                                 ` Dave Horsfall
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Arthur Krewat @ 2020-02-07 16:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Sorry, I forgot to add a ;) to the end of that ;)

On 2/7/2020 12:07 AM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Friday,  7 February 2020 at 15:31:28 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> On Thu, 6 Feb 2020, Steve Nickolas wrote:
>>
>>> Works fine on my end.  (It's supposed to end in "20Segmentation fault
>>> (core dumped)", right?)
> Funny, I didn't get Steve's message.
>
> Clearly the obvious check is
>
>   $ echo $?
>
> But over the years I've been surprised how many people have been fooled.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog@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


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors))
  2020-02-07  5:39                                 ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2020-02-07 21:39                                   ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-07 21:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Fri, 7 Feb 2020, Steve Nickolas wrote:

> I did "ls -tr" to check for a coredump. ;p

Core files aren't always found in the current directory.  In fact, they've 
been evolving over the years; first, it was "core", then "core.PID" (and I 
think I saw "PID.core" once, or was that process.core"?), and now they 
seem to be in /cores.  Of course, YMMV...

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors))
  2020-02-07  5:07                               ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2020-02-07  5:39                                 ` Steve Nickolas
  2020-02-07 16:14                                 ` Arthur Krewat
@ 2020-02-07 22:37                                 ` Dave Horsfall
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-02-07 22:37 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Fri, 7 Feb 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> But over the years I've been surprised how many people have been fooled.

I'm sure that we've all pulled pranks like that.  My favourite was piping 
the output of "man" (a shell script on that system) through "Valley Girl" 
(where each "!" was followed e.g. by "Gag me with a spoon!" etc).

Well, $BOSS came into the office after a "heavy" night, and did something 
like "man uucp", not quite figuring out what was wrong; I was summoned 
shortly afterwards, as I was the only possible culprit...

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-05 17:09                       ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-02-08  3:31                         ` Ronald Natalie
  2020-02-08  4:19                           ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Ronald Natalie @ 2020-02-08  3:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

It has been F-Suck since we first got a copy.


My favorite UNIX quote was Ken Thompson (I hope I’m getting this right Ken), when asked if he could do it over again, if he’d change anything.
He said he’d put an “e” on the end of creat.

I’ve always pronounced it CREE-AT.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-08  3:31                         ` Ronald Natalie
@ 2020-02-08  4:19                           ` Rob Pike
  2020-02-11  1:16                             ` George Michaelson
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-02-08  4:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Ronald Natalie; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 612 bytes --]

Not quite. It was a question I asked him, while Brian Kernighan and I were
writing the Unix Programming Environment. His actual response was pithier
(as one would expect): "I'd spell creat with an 'e'".

-rob


On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 2:33 PM Ronald Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> It has been F-Suck since we first got a copy.
>
>
> My favorite UNIX quote was Ken Thompson (I hope I’m getting this right
> Ken), when asked if he could do it over again, if he’d change anything.
> He said he’d put an “e” on the end of creat.
>
> I’ve always pronounced it CREE-AT.
>
>
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-08  4:19                           ` Rob Pike
@ 2020-02-11  1:16                             ` George Michaelson
  2020-02-11  6:38                               ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 84+ messages in thread
From: George Michaelson @ 2020-02-11  1:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

I thought this was a Denis story not a Ken story. Its still a good
story.  Since you're one of the two people in the conversation, I
think I can take it I'm wrong btw.

(it used to get repeated at UUG, it was always good for a laugh)

-G

On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 2:19 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Not quite. It was a question I asked him, while Brian Kernighan and I were writing the Unix Programming Environment. His actual response was pithier (as one would expect): "I'd spell creat with an 'e'".
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 2:33 PM Ronald Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>>
>> It has been F-Suck since we first got a copy.
>>
>>
>> My favorite UNIX quote was Ken Thompson (I hope I’m getting this right Ken), when asked if he could do it over again, if he’d change anything.
>> He said he’d put an “e” on the end of creat.
>>
>> I’ve always pronounced it CREE-AT.
>>
>>
>>

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas
  2020-02-11  1:16                             ` George Michaelson
@ 2020-02-11  6:38                               ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-02-11  6:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: George Michaelson; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1137 bytes --]

See the bottom of page 204 of UPE.

-rob


On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 12:17 PM George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> wrote:

> I thought this was a Denis story not a Ken story. Its still a good
> story.  Since you're one of the two people in the conversation, I
> think I can take it I'm wrong btw.
>
> (it used to get repeated at UUG, it was always good for a laugh)
>
> -G
>
> On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 2:19 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Not quite. It was a question I asked him, while Brian Kernighan and I
> were writing the Unix Programming Environment. His actual response was
> pithier (as one would expect): "I'd spell creat with an 'e'".
> >
> > -rob
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 2:33 PM Ronald Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> It has been F-Suck since we first got a copy.
> >>
> >>
> >> My favorite UNIX quote was Ken Thompson (I hope I’m getting this right
> Ken), when asked if he could do it over again, if he’d change anything.
> >> He said he’d put an “e” on the end of creat.
> >>
> >> I’ve always pronounced it CREE-AT.
> >>
> >>
> >>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors / machine load
@ 2020-01-10 15:35 Noel Chiappa
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2020-01-10 15:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc

    > When Bernie Greenberg did EMACS for Multics, he had a similar issue. I
    > recall reading a document with an extensive discussion of how they dealt
    > with this ... If anyone's really interested in this, and can't find it
    > themselves, I can try looking for it.

I got a request for this; a Web search turned up:

  https://www.multicians.org/mepap.html

which covers the points I mentioned (and more besides, such as why LISP was
chosen). I don't think this is the thing I remembered (which was, IIRC, an
informal note), but it does seem to be a later version of that.

	 Noel

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] screen editors / machine load
@ 2020-01-10 14:35 Noel Chiappa
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 84+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2020-01-10 14:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc

    > From: Otto Moerbeek <otto@drijf.net>

    > I believe it was not only vi itself that was causing the load, it was
    > also running many terminals in raw mode that killed performance.

I'm not familiar with the tty driver in late versions of Unix like 4.1 (sic),
but I'm very familiar with the one in V6, and it's not the raw mode _itself_
that caused the load (the code paths in the kernel for cooked and raw aren't
that different), but rather the need to wake up and run a process on every
character that was the real load.

When Bernie Greenberg did EMACS for Multics, he had a similar issue. I recall
reading a document with an extensive discussion of how they dealt with this,
especially when using the system over the ARPANET. IIRC, normal printing
characters were echoed without waking up the process; remotely, when using
the network. If anyone's really interested in this, and can't find it themselves,
I can try looking for it.

	Noel


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 84+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2020-02-11  6:39 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 84+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2020-01-08  7:39 [TUHS] screen editors Thomas Paulsen
2020-01-08 15:58 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-01-08 23:41   ` Dave Horsfall
2020-01-09  1:43     ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-01-08 21:49 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-01-08 22:01   ` Clem Cole
2020-01-17 23:38     ` Dave Horsfall
2020-01-18  0:07       ` Ryan Casalino
2020-01-18 23:02       ` greg travis
2020-01-10  8:13   ` markus schnalke
2020-01-10  8:17     ` U'll Be King of the Stars
2020-01-11 19:58       ` markus schnalke
2020-01-11 20:54         ` Derek Fawcus
2020-01-11 21:27         ` Henry Bent
2020-02-04  8:40         ` Sijmen J. Mulder
2020-02-04 20:14           ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) G. Branden Robinson
2020-02-04 21:05             ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-04 21:52               ` Derek Fawcus
2020-02-04 23:27                 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05  3:34                   ` Warner Losh
2020-02-05  9:49                   ` Angelo Papenhoff
2020-02-05 11:40                     ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05 11:43                       ` Brantley Coile
2020-02-05 10:58                   ` Ralph Corderoy
2020-02-05 11:45                     ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05  8:45             ` arnold
2020-02-05 13:35               ` Clem cole
2020-02-05 16:11                 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
2020-02-05 16:16                   ` Clem Cole
2020-02-05 17:05                     ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-05 17:09                       ` Clem Cole
2020-02-08  3:31                         ` Ronald Natalie
2020-02-08  4:19                           ` Rob Pike
2020-02-11  1:16                             ` George Michaelson
2020-02-11  6:38                               ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05 20:26                       ` David Arnold
2020-02-05 19:37                 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
2020-02-05 19:57                   ` Clem Cole
2020-02-05 20:50                 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05 21:43                   ` Clem Cole
2020-02-05 21:59                   ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-05 22:22                   ` Ed Carp
2020-02-06  2:43                     ` Dan Cross
2020-02-06  3:00                       ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-06  5:20                         ` Vincenzo Nicosia
2020-02-06 14:54                           ` Richard Salz
2020-02-06 15:10                             ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Lars Brinkhoff
2020-02-06 20:14                               ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-06 20:20                                 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-06 19:55                       ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
2020-02-06 21:48                         ` Michael Parson
2020-02-06 23:56                           ` Michael Parson
2020-02-06 22:17                         ` Clem Cole
2020-02-07  0:21                         ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-02-07  0:27                           ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-07  0:54                             ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
2020-02-07  1:00                               ` Richard Salz
2020-02-07  5:26                               ` Peter Jeremy
2020-02-07  4:31                             ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Dave Horsfall
2020-02-07  5:07                               ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-02-07  5:39                                 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-07 21:39                                   ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-07 16:14                                 ` Arthur Krewat
2020-02-07 22:37                                 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-07  4:23                           ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-06  2:23                   ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dan Cross
2020-02-06  2:31                     ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-05 19:08               ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-05 21:01                 ` Nemo
2020-02-05 22:06                   ` Dave Horsfall
2020-01-10 13:41     ` [TUHS] screen editors / machine load Mike Markowski
2020-01-10 13:56       ` Otto Moerbeek
2020-01-10 15:00       ` Mary Ann Horton
2020-01-10 15:48         ` Clem Cole
2020-01-10 22:18           ` Adam Thornton
2020-01-11  0:30             ` Christopher Browne
2020-01-10 15:31     ` [TUHS] screen editors Nemo Nusquam
2020-01-10 16:04       ` Clem Cole
2020-01-10 17:10       ` Dan Cross
2020-01-10 17:18         ` Steve Nickolas
2020-01-18  1:55           ` Michael Parson
2020-01-10 15:58     ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-10 14:35 [TUHS] screen editors / machine load Noel Chiappa
2020-01-10 15:35 Noel Chiappa

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