[Shameless Plug] A New Book

It's a primarily Unix-based typesetting package, older and less sophisticated than LaTeX. Nowadays its probably used most for Unix manual pages, since it's the native format, but I'm sure I'm not alone in still using it for other purposes. It enables you to define your own macros so once you're familar with the system you can be very quick, e.g. I have one macro that starts a letter complete with my address, recipients address (in the correct place for a window envelope - takes experimentation in a word processor) and date automatically. This might not seem special but to get it all I need do is type ".LH" at the beginning of a line. Similarly I have a macro to insert a signature block at the end of the letter - it will even insert my signature if I tell it. After all, I'm far too important to be wasting time signing my own letters. ;-)

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Andrew Smallshaw
andrews@sdf.lonestar.org
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Andrew Smallshaw
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(snipped)

Hi Tim,

Ha, you may be right. I once had one of the country's greatest DSP gurus Fred Harris (of Blackman-Harris window fame) tell me that when he wrote his DSP book he was warned by his friend Bernard Sklar (of digital comms fame) that "You can never find all the typos."

Ya' know, I think Sklar is probably correct.

[-Rick-]
Reply to
Rick Lyons

Sure you can... offer $25 reward for first reporter of each error. Then every student in the world will be pounding through your book.

"Calculus and Analytic Geometry" by Thomas did that. By the end of first semester there were no more rewards to be claimed ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Could be a lot of money...

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%  Randy Yates                  % "My Shangri-la has gone away, fading like 
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %  the Beatles on 'Hey Jude'" 
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Reply to
Randy Yates

If you know you plan to do that, maybe not. :-)

Jerry

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Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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Reply to
Jerry Avins

At the rate that I generate typos I'm not sure I could swing it. If I had that much money I'd just go ahead and buy a small South American country, anyway.

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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

And TROFF is Typesetter ROFF. There's also GROFF.

Jerry

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Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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Reply to
Jerry Avins

Anybody else remember DEC Runoff? The name was similar, but I don't think the macros were very similar. But that was so many years ago...

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Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Is it FUN to be
                                  at               a MIDGET?
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Reply to
Grant Edwards

It was known as roff for short. NROFF and TROFF were patterned after it. The macros were dot so much different as not yet standardized. I had several NROFF .ms files for different printers, even one for an early HP inkjet.

Jerry

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Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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Reply to
Jerry Avins

No kidding? For some reason, I had always thought it was the other way around -- probably just because I used Unix nroff before I used DEC runoff.

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Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  All right, you
                                  at               degenerates! I want this
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Reply to
Grant Edwards

Yes. I used a VAX cluster during the 80s and it was my tool of choice on that machine until we obtained Scribe. TeX/LaTeX was also available on it, but I didn't get into it until I bought my first PC in 1988. I remember Nelson Blackman (GTE Government Sytsems) using it for his monthly scientist report.

By the way, I absolutely loved VMS.

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%  Randy Yates                  % "She's sweet on Wagner-I think she'd die for
Beethoven.
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Reply to
Randy Yates

I've never used a VAX cluster, but I know a story about one. Since we're totally off topic from an off-topic post, I figure I can digress some more -- right?

I took a multiprocessor class in the late 80's. The class project was to write a program to be benchmarked and run on a single processor, then a multiprocessor system. It was easy the year I did it, because the campus had a brand new Encore computer system with as many National Semi

32-bit micros as you wanted to stuff into it.

At any rate, you write your little puzzle solving program on one processor and benchmark the results. Then you obtain access to a multiprocessor system, tweak your code, and benchmark your results again. In theory, with N processors the final answer should come out in

1/N as much time as with one processor -- right?

The instructor kept two records. At the time that I took the class the best speedup was something like 99.9% of theoretical, with a hand-built two-processor 8086 system with all dual-port RAM. The most slowdown was on a 4-processor VAX cluster, which would solve the puzzle on a single processor in about 40 minutes. When the hapless programmer tried it with all four, the plug got pulled after 24 hours.

It seems that on a VAX cluster any interprocessor communications that overflows the (small) buffer goes to disk...

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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

It could be a tuning parameter that was mis-tuned. It seems that these DEC systems were very tunable.

I think ours were mainly used for load balancing. It was pretty amazing considering a cluster of 4 vaxes was serving 100+ simultaneous users at times - in ~mid-80s. Try doing that now, even with a 3+ GHz Pentium IV processor.

Shall I also tell about our PDP 11/70s and RSX11-M?

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%  Randy Yates                  % "And all that I can do
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %  is say I'm sorry, 
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Reply to
Randy Yates

^^^

Jerry,

Was that deliberate, given that most of the macros began with a period, e.g. '.p' for a paragraph?

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Andy McC
Reply to
Andy McC

[...]

Knuth has always offered a bounty of $2.56 for errors found in his books. But I think most people frame the check rather than cash it. I know I would...

Regards, -=Dave

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Change is inevitable, progress is not.
Reply to
Dave Hansen

Jerry,

I always remember Xerex as being a type of antifreeze.

Clay

Reply to
Clay S. Turner

No, dot deliberate at all. I habe a code.

Jerry

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Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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Reply to
Jerry Avins

So it was! For trademark purposes, is Xerex the same as XereX? The 'xer' for "dry" is necessary. Otherwise is could have been xorox. Oh, well!

Jerry

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Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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Reply to
Jerry Avins

(snipped)

Hi Jim,

interesting. I'm gonna guess that the typical new textbook has 40-100 errors that should be corrected.

So you're talkin' a fair amount of money there.

[-Rick-]
Reply to
Rick Lyons

EBCDIC, BAUDOT, HOLLERITH or ASCII

Reply to
Richard Owlett

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