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From: siemsen@sol.usc.edu (Pete Siemsen)
Subject: [folklore] Re: TECO (was Re: the jargon file)
Message-ID: <1990Dec20.050546.26162@ox.com>
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers
Sender: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Reply-To: siemsen@sol.usc.edu (Pete Siemsen)
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References: <CSTACY.90Dec17151739@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu> <13187@milton.u.washington.edu> <ZIPPY.90Dec18012554@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> <1990Dec18.174730.9234@dg-rtp.dg.com> <28957@usc>
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 90 05:05:46 GMT
Approved: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
X-Original-Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers

Archive-name: editors/teco/teco/1990-12-19
Archive-directory: usc.edu:/pub/teco/ [128.125.1.45]
Original-posting-by: siemsen@sol.usc.edu (Pete Siemsen)
Original-subject: Re: TECO (was Re: the jargon file)
Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)

rice@dg-rtp.dg.com (Brian Rice) writes:

>In article <ZIPPY.90Dec18012554@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu>, 
>zippy@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Patrick Tufts) writes:
>|> Where *is* TECO alive?

You can ftp TECO stuff from usc.edu in directory /pub/teco.  This
directory contains the DECUS TECO Collection, which I maintain.  It
has several TECOs for various platforms, many TECO macros, the latest
Standard TECO Manual (DEC's manual, but a newer version than they
distribute) and other things relating to TECO.  TECO is available in
various forms for VAX/VMS, RSX, RT-11, RSTS, Tops, Tenex, Unix,
MS-DOS, the Macintosh OS, and (soon) the Amiga.

>Not too long ago, I worked
>at a VMS site...there was a certain file-manipulation task, I 
>don't remember precisely what, which was most easily accomplished
>by EDIT/TECO'ing the file and immediately saving it (with 
>EX<esc><esc>).  Maybe it was removing trailing spaces from
>each line or some such.  But I found TECO invaluable for it.

It was probably to deal with the output of DEC's RUNOFF utility, which
produces files with "record attributes" set to nothing.  This allows
RUNOFF to do overstriking and underlining of characters on standard
line printers by overprinting lines.  It's a pain if you want to read
the file with most programs, because they are used to "normal" files,
which have "implied carriage return" record attributes.  So if you use
a text editor to look at a file that was produced by RUNOFF, you may
get the line-feeds that are in the file plus the line-feeds injected
by your editor.  DEC's documented method for "normalizing" these files
was to run TECO on the file and exit immediately.

>I seem to remember this trick being documented, rather out
>of the blue, in that little "Using the VMS Editors" book.

See the appendices of older RUNOFF (also called DSR) manuals.  I think
manuals through version 4 of VMS still mentioned TECO.  Newer manuals
don't.
-- 
Pete Siemsen                         Pete Siemsen            siemsen@usc.edu
University of Southern California    645 Ohio Ave. #302      (213) 740-7391 (w)
1020 West Jefferson Blvd.            Long Beach, CA 90814    (213) 433-3059 (h)
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0251
