Notices by Lars Brinkhoff (larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org)

The escape code was also called Altmode. On Emacs, which was invented 1976 at the MIT AI lab, an Altmode prefix key can be used the same way as a Meta modifier key. This is till true today.

This 1961 proposed standard for punched tape has a lozenge ◊ as the printed representation for an ESCAPE code. Around 10 years later, the Stanford and MIT AI labs adopted this glyph for their extended ASCII character set.

In the early 1980s, the Sun workstation adopted the Meta modifier; the keyboard used a lozenge or filled diamond ◆ symbol.

A few years later, both Altmode and Meta where adopted by the Lisp machine "space-cadet" keyboard.

Appendix A: Yes, earlier Sun keyboards labelled Meta "Left" and "Right.

NOW, this all leads up to my question: Riddle me this, is there a connection between the SAIL/MIT Altmode ◊, and the Sun Meta ◊◆?

Appendix B: Interesting information about the Meta modifier in X and xterm. https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm-meta-key.html

@xuxxux @amszmidt @pymander @jbaty My .emacs vibe is more like "if the defaults are good enough for rms, they are good enough for me". 75 lines total; no use-package.

@xuxxux @amszmidt @pymander @jbaty In fact, half or so of my .emacs is to retain the pristine look and feel of Emacs 19.34.

Tired: shit posting
Wired: manure messaging

@brouhaha @AmenZwa @amszmidt @dimpase @trofi With the ITS C compiler, all integer types are 36 bits wide. Yes, even char.

@AmenZwa @amszmidt @dimpase @trofi ITS, well into the 1980s, came with the 1972 pre-K&R C.

@amszmidt @loke @emacsomancer Today, I think we can charitably interpret people saying "Emacs" as talking specifically about "GNU Emacs". Maybe even forgive them for not knowing that Emacs-the-abstract-editor-idea can and did have other implementation and extension languages.

@amszmidt @bitsplusatoms @interlisp Do you (or anyone) have a 3D model of a CADR?

@amszmidt Shouldn't that be handled with a "charset" or "coding-system"? Asking for a fiend.

@ramin_hal9001 @kentpitman I think there are many aspects to "Emacs philosophy" but one of them is "ITS philosophy". This again has many aspects, one example of which is the how Emacs is "unexeced" when built. This seems rather quirky today, but makes perfect sense and is standard procedure on ITS and other PDP-10 systems.

Another aspect is the user interface which is based on key strokes. This UX tradition can be traced all the way back to the TX-0 and the TMRC community (original hackers).

@etchedpixels GNU Emacs is only at 30.1 whereas the original is 170. So TECO is a factor 5.6 better than Lisp at this point.

Happy birthday PDP-10! #OnThisDay 58 years ago, the PDP-10 was first powered on. Whoopee, it goes!

@kentpitman @ldbeth @kim The first TECO ran standalone on an MIT PDP-1. In 1964, it was ported to the AI lab PDP-6, also running standalone.

In 1966, Bob Clements brought TECO along to the Stanford AI lab and ported it to their PDP-6 running the DEC Monitor timesharing system. From this rather early and crude TECO stems all DEC versions.

Back at MIT, TECO was updated to run under the ITS timesharing system and there was a frantic development, culminating in EMACS.

@amszmidt Ths reminds me of an anime I saw a long time ago when a dead, or nearly so, body fell into a mainframe type computer, tangled with the wires, and became part of the machine. Good times. But try as I might, I haven't been able to find it since. Help?