Posts by mwichary@mastodon.online
(DIR) Post #B2HYpc0sMV7NPBhP8q by mwichary@mastodon.online
2025-12-26T22:41:47Z
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1972 and a new form of escaping. This is a system called RCA Page-1, and if I understand it correctly, it implies =(alpha)= for characters unavailable on the computer keyboard, but available.In a deliciously meta way, they also talk about how they needed angle brackets to be different to less-than/greater-than – perhaps similar to the mathematical ⟨⟩ angle brackets?Source: https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/362248.362279
(DIR) Post #B2HYpcc686tNGd789w by mwichary@mastodon.online
2025-12-26T22:42:42Z
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This is interesting because of all the brackets I have seen systems shy away from () for obvious reasons. This is the first approaching it, but carefully and surrounded by = presumably as this makes the combination unlikely to appear in source text.
(DIR) Post #B2HYpdG9jAw1Grr7b6 by mwichary@mastodon.online
2025-12-26T22:43:46Z
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Ah yes, elsewhere in the paper they make it explicit!
(DIR) Post #B2HYpdyp36fDVOknDc by mwichary@mastodon.online
2025-12-26T22:56:19Z
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I mean some of this is just really fascinating. 1966:
(DIR) Post #B2HYpedabXH1XppLlI by mwichary@mastodon.online
2025-12-26T22:58:05Z
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Same paper, and here are angle brackets put to use to indicate upper- and lowercase, presumably on a machine like a teletype that supports only uppercase.
(DIR) Post #B2HYpfMbu9HnnStIw4 by mwichary@mastodon.online
2025-12-26T22:59:27Z
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Honestly, I feel like I still have months of interlibrary requests until I follow all the citations and nooks and crannies here. But at this point I’m really starting to dig into the (photo)typesetting parts and that’s really fun and all foreign to me.
(DIR) Post #B2HYpg6h8o9K6OS6lc by mwichary@mastodon.online
2025-12-27T04:51:42Z
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We didn’t see dollar signs yet, did we?
(DIR) Post #B2HYpgyvt9XCobpQJ6 by mwichary@mastodon.online
2025-12-27T16:01:48Z
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This is an interesting way. Instead of delimiters using punctuation, a combination of regular in-band letters (qq) is used that is just not meant to appear in real text.
(DIR) Post #B2HYphgtFihF0wOWp6 by mwichary@mastodon.online
2025-12-27T16:07:20Z
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And this one has double braces, which presumably avoids the need to escape single braces if the appear in text.
(DIR) Post #B2HYpiVEEYxjX3wjHk by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-10T04:51:55Z
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Oh, wow. Got a book about RCA PAGE-1, a typesetting system which came out in 1967. In it, they talk about typical stuff like [tf,4;mi,50;bs,100;mx,150] for changing fonts, and [ob] for italics/oblique and [ro] to go back to Roman… …but the also have a concept of [c1] and [c2] and [c3] that are actually starting to feel kind of semantic! They still are more for macrodefinitions/expansion – kind of like the “Lucy” of this space – but that’s much earlier than I expected.Also: braces. 😍
(DIR) Post #B2HYpjBPhihrdtgQ2S by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-10T04:52:34Z
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Scanned the book here if you are interested! https://archive.org/details/computer-composition-using-page-1And more information about RCA PAGE-1 (VideoComp) is here: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/1968-04-05.pdf
(DIR) Post #B2HYpjxcoTGs3QEvBY by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-10T04:56:57Z
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By the way, I have never heard of a roman (non italic/non oblique) style being referred to as “erect.”
(DIR) Post #B2HYpkkXsaP2V97zRA by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-10T05:12:56Z
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I’m trying to figure out what were the keyboards that were used with RCA VideoComp (or Hell Digiset, which I understand is the alt/original name of the device). One of the arguments against braces and pro angle brackets is that the latter weren’t easily available – but at least here it seems this wasn’t a problem.
(DIR) Post #B2HYpleuV1UPJxV0IC by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-10T05:17:29Z
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“A battery of girls on perforators.” https://www.nytimes.com/1967/11/16/archives/processing-of-long-book-is-entirely-by-computer.htmlI just ordered online on Biblio a copy of that book, just for fun. It’s not expensive.
(DIR) Post #B2HYpmYv8mIC7fhjay by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-10T05:21:43Z
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I don’t know yet what layout perforators were used, but here’s the RCA Spectra terminal, using a pretty standard Selectric keyboard (and some other buttons – a pretty typical setup of the time).What’s interesting is that <> are nowhere to be seen, but [] are there as alts on the 1 key.https://archive.org/details/TNM_RCA_Spectra_70-752_video_data_terminal_20180205_0106
(DIR) Post #B2HYpnEkdFkkDPH8nQ by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-10T05:23:26Z
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Where we would expect <> today are just , . But they’re also available unshifted.This was pretty typical for typewriters. Shifting was kind of heavy, and ,. punctuation very common… so often ,. were there both shifted and unshifted on those two keys.
(DIR) Post #B2HYpo97Fgq72De9eS by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-10T05:54:15Z
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Elsewhere in RCA docs, ASCII is already being referred to, with <> listed, but [] or {} not available. Interesting! And the teletype console seems to have only () and maybe <>? What a mess! I might not get anywhere here.
(DIR) Post #B2HYpos8YIqtHqi6pE by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-14T14:02:15Z
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I was so eager to scan this after it came because it was months before one appeared on eBay!This is a manual for a popular Compugraphic typesetter, with a very different approach to markup that’s more similar to control characters in e.g. WordStar.Everything is based on specialized keys, and displayed with special characters, shade, and underline.Imagine a version of HTML where you’d need a keyboard with a key for each tag!Check it out here: https://archive.org/details/compugraphic-edit-writer-family
(DIR) Post #B2TRfVl07ajv3oa02a by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-11T16:18:53Z
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Small hypothesis: I bet people like AI chat interfaces in some part because they are “clean” – simple text, easy to process, consistent visuals, no ads, no pop-ups, etc.To use a cliche example: Even if it wasn’t in any way “smarter,” it’d still be nicer to ask ChatGPT for a recipe than go to a webpage to read that recipe. Its interface is a natural “reader mode.”But… that’s not going to last.
(DIR) Post #B2TRfaojJ9h2kpMY2y by mwichary@mastodon.online
2026-01-11T17:09:55Z
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By the way, wanted to applaud everyone for having an actual conversation, rather than overreacting! But maybe I’m applauding myself to some extent for blocking everyone who couldn’t handle it last time I posted something about AI. 😀