Re: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
From: Bernard Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] The expensive electrical card punches (the size of a desk) printed the ascii equivalent across the top of the card at the same time as printing it. Or more likely the EBCDIC equivalent if you used IBM machines. :-) Ah, the good old days... Ah yes, the old days! :-) Dave David Webber Author MOZART the music processor for Windows - http://www.mozart.co.uk For discussion/support see http://www.mozart.co.uk/mzusers/mailinglist.htm To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
On Thursday 19 August 2004 11:53, David Webber wrote: From: Bernard Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] The expensive electrical card punches (the size of a desk) printed the ascii equivalent across the top of the card at the same time as printing it. Or more likely the EBCDIC equivalent if you used IBM machines. :-) Ah, the good old days... I've got an old card sorter base, Use it has a base for my wood turning lathe it's made out of cast Aluminum, you can.t move it on your own, it takes two of you when it's in bits. bob To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
I wasn't for when YOU dropped them so much as when the computer ops dropped them (and didn't tell you). Particularly BEFORE the run! That was why we put big diagonal lines in felt pen across the tops. How many computer users nowadays have ever seen or a punch card? I have a couple in a box as souvenirs. That 72 is especially bizarre. How many people these days could even tell you where that strange number comes from? But lots of software does it. I used the columns after 72 for sequence numbers so I could use the sorter to put a deck of cards back in order if (when) I dropped them. Up to 72, I used for FORTRAN code. lol ... and on a good day I could get two or three runs at the school computer. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Richard Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes How many computer users nowadays have ever seen or used a punch card? I have a couple in a box as souvenirs. That 72 is especially bizarre. How many people these days could even tell you where that strange number comes from? But lots of software does it. I used the columns after 72 for sequence numbers so I could use the sorter to put a deck of cards back in order if (when) I dropped them. Up to 72, I used for FORTRAN code. lol ... and on a good day I could get two or three runs at the school computer. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html Those of us who started computing in the 1960s will remember that: 80 was the width of the card. Most programs in those days were written in FORTRAN (Fortran I, II or IV): one instruction per line which had special formatting: Cols 1-6 were the numeric label number, as in GOTO 1000 (or if column 1 was C then the whole line was a comment) Col 7 was a continuation line: any character there and the line is regarded as a continuation of the previous line Col 8-72 are for program instruction Col 73-80 8 columns were available as a comment area. Anything you wrote there was ignored. Sometimes it was used to number the cards sequentially if the program was in a completed form. Dropping a deck of several hundred cards was a potential disaster. The cards were punched on a hand punch which allowed punching in any combination of usually up to 3 keys in 10 (iirc) vertical positions on the card. You got to be very fast with this and large right arm muscles since it was done one-handed. The expensive electrical card punches (the size of a desk) printed the ascii equivalent across the top of the card at the same time as printing it. Ah, the good old days... -- Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
How many computer users nowadays have ever seen or used a punch card? I have a couple in a box as souvenirs. That 72 is especially bizarre. How many people these days could even tell you where that strange number comes from? But lots of software does it. I used the columns after 72 for sequence numbers so I could use the sorter to put a deck of cards back in order if (when) I dropped them. I wasn't for when YOU dropped them so much as when the computer ops dropped them (and didn't tell you). Particularly BEFORE the run! That was why we put big diagonal lines in felt pen across the tops. I discovered the point of that the hard way when I wrote a program to analyze an undergraduate physics experiment, Cavendish's method for determining the gravitational constant. You set two small lead balls oscillating between two large lead balls; most of the damping is due to air friction but a second-order factor is due to gravity. Most students did it graphically on paper. I decided to do better, found our local numerical analysis guru, got a state-of-the-art algorithm for estimating the parameters of damped harmonic motion, and coded it in Fortran IV for an IBM 1130. Everything hunky-dory except I dropped part of my data deck and inadvertently produced an oscillatory motion with a huge jag in it. My resulting estimate for the strength of gravity made it comparable with the nuclear strong force. No time to book another run after I figured out what happened. The odd thing is, here am I, more than 30 years on, sitting at a Power Mac 9600/200 with 384Mb of memory - whereas the 1130 had 32Kb, I think, and presumably ran at a few thousand instructions per second - but despite having a few gigabytes of software under the table I couldn't do the same analysis now. I couldn't have imagined there'd ever be a computer you couldn't run Fortran on. - Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760 http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack * food intolerance data recipes, Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM Embro, Embro. -- off-list mail to j-c rather than abc at this site, please -- To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jack Campin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes The odd thing is, here am I, more than 30 years on, sitting at a Power Mac 9600/200 with 384Mb of memory - whereas the 1130 had 32Kb, I think, and presumably ran at a few thousand instructions per second - but despite having a few gigabytes of software under the table I couldn't do the same analysis now. I couldn't have imagined there'd ever be a computer you couldn't run Fortran on. Really? you can't get Fortran for the Mac? I have Fortran IV for the PC (somewhere). DOS of course g. Invariable for complex number calculations, or when you only have F4 libraries of numerical analysis. -- Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
John Chambers wrote: Since ABC is widely used to send tunes via email, ABC ends up being embedded inside messages in lots of other formats. It's fairly common for this to garble the ABC, as the encoding software is usually debugged only with ordinary (English) text. Decoding is fairly haphazard, and it will be common for your software to encounter partly-decoded email messages that contain partly-decoded tunes. The sensible thing might be to just throw up your hands and refuse to deal with it. But you have a lot of companies working on a lot of email software doing their best to make life difficult for you. Ran into this nonsense mailing a gal a php proggie I had written for her to convert medline source references into CSV txt file... She (unfortunately everyone on campus who doesn't know any better) is using exchange. Finally had to send her a zip. lt;?php and so on and so forth. -- || Christian Marcus Cepel | And the wrens have returned [EMAIL PROTECTED] icq:12384980 | are nesting; In the hollow of 371 Crown Point, Columbia, MO| that oak where his heart once 65203-2202 573.999.2370 | had been; And he lifts up his Computer Support Specialist, Sr. | arms in a blessing; For being University of Missouri-Columbia | born again. --Rich Mullins To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
Christian M. Cepel writes: | John Chambers wrote: | | Since ABC is widely used to send tunes via email, ABC ends up being | embedded inside messages in lots of other formats. It's fairly common | for this to garble the ABC, as the encoding software is usually | debugged only with ordinary (English) text. ... | Ran into this nonsense mailing a gal a php proggie I had written for her | to convert medline source references into CSV txt file... | | She (unfortunately everyone on campus who doesn't know any better) is | using exchange. Finally had to send her a zip. | | lt;?php | | and so on and so forth. Yeah; in this list we notice how email software damages ABC, but it's a well-known problem in most programming languages. Back before 1990, when most email software was written by programmers for programmers, it was less common (though it did happen). But then the commercial folks jumped onto this new Internet thing, and they decided to scrap all that techie stuff and write user-friendly software. The results were generally programmer-hostile. It effects everyone who tries to use email to send anything that is formatted differently from English. In ABC, a string like A2B4c2 will be treated as six tokens by most intelligent email software, and newlines may be inserted anywhere. When one is inserted before one of the numbers, the result usually doesn't work correctly, since most ABC software doesn't know what to do with a number at the start of a line/staff. But this has been at least a minor headache for programmers since we first had email back in the 70's. Despite attempts to make email standards that prevent such damage, the problem is probably worse now than ever. What's funny is all the software that wraps lines at 80 or 72 chars. This is referred to in the literature as the symptom of a punch card mind. How many computer users nowadays have ever seen or used a punch card? I have a couple in a box as souvenirs. That 72 is especially bizarre. How many people these days could even tell you where that strange number comes from? But lots of software does it. I guess you could call it a tradition ... To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
RE: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
How many computer users nowadays have ever seen or used a punch card? I have a couple in a box as souvenirs. That 72 is especially bizarre. How many people these days could even tell you where that strange number comes from? But lots of software does it. I used the columns after 72 for sequence numbers so I could use the sorter to put a deck of cards back in order if (when) I dropped them. Up to 72, I used for FORTRAN code. lol ... and on a good day I could get two or three runs at the school computer. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] On parsers again - Outlook PHP
John Chambers wrote: Christian M. Cepel writes: | John Chambers wrote: | | Since ABC is widely used to send tunes via email, ABC ends up being | embedded inside messages in lots of other formats. It's fairly common | for this to garble the ABC, as the encoding software is usually | debugged only with ordinary (English) text. ... | Ran into this nonsense mailing a gal a php proggie I had written for her | to convert medline source references into CSV txt file... | | She (unfortunately everyone on campus who doesn't know any better) is | using exchange. Finally had to send her a zip. | | lt;?php | | and so on and so forth. Yeah; in this list we notice how email software damages ABC, but it's a well-known problem in most programming languages. Back before 1990, when most email software was written by programmers for programmers, it was less common (though it did happen). But then the commercial folks jumped onto this new Internet thing, and they decided to scrap all that techie stuff and write user-friendly software. The results were generally programmer-hostile. It effects everyone who tries to use email to send anything that is formatted differently from English. In ABC, a string like A2B4c2 will be treated as six tokens by most intelligent email software, and newlines may be inserted anywhere. When one is inserted before one of the numbers, the result usually doesn't work correctly, since most ABC software doesn't know what to do with a number at the start of a line/staff. But this has been at least a minor headache for programmers since we first had email back in the 70's. Despite attempts to make email standards that prevent such damage, the problem is probably worse now than ever. What's funny is all the software that wraps lines at 80 or 72 chars. This is referred to in the literature as the symptom of a punch card mind. How many computer users nowadays have ever seen or used a punch card? I have a couple in a box as souvenirs. That 72 is especially bizarre. How many people these days could even tell you where that strange number comes from? But lots of software does it. I guess you could call it a tradition ... To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html I'd just like to kill the makers of Eudora for setting the default settings of their mail software to UUencode attachments but still send them out with the original mime-type.My boss would send me stuff via eudora all the time.. say a word doc... download it.. open it in word (hey. the mime-type extension are correct) only to see a 644 begin line. Have to ftp it up to unix, uudecode, ftp it back and then open it. -- || Christian Marcus Cepel | And the wrens have returned [EMAIL PROTECTED] icq:12384980 | are nesting; In the hollow of 371 Crown Point, Columbia, MO| that oak where his heart once 65203-2202 573.999.2370 | had been; And he lifts up his Computer Support Specialist, Sr. | arms in a blessing; For being University of Missouri-Columbia | born again. --Rich Mullins To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
