You are too old if you remember.......

[1995hoo]

Regarding Windows XP, that's newfangled. Maybe we should have a thread on which version of DOS everyone liked best. (The first PC my parents got ran IBM PC-DOS 3.30 and WordPerfect 4.2.)

Wordperfect 4.2 was so good that many of my colleagues refused to move up to Windows 3.0.   Sadly, I've forgotten all of the quick-keys for the DOS versions of WordPerfect.

I thought WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was excellent and perhaps their best DOS version. We published the Duke Law Journal using WP 5.1 for DOS. If you knew how to manipulate the hidden codes, you could do almost anything, and the software seldom crashed (not "never," but seldom). Where WP 4.2 was weak was in how it justified text. It wasn't quite sophisticated enough to space the words evenly and you'd get two spaces between some words and one space between others, all on the same line. That was a good reason not to use justification then. (I know some people still object to it. I use it, and I also use automatic hyphenation, augmented by my inserting optional hyphens and non-breaking hyphens as needed. The hyphenation reduces the white space effect to which some people object.)

I've forgotten most of the WP keystrokes as well. I know Shift-F7 was Print and I think Alt-F4 was Block (that is, highlighting a block of text).

As I think back, it occurs to me that manipulating WP's hidden codes was very similar to manipulating this forum's codes, or to a rudimentary version of HTML. Boldfaced text, for example, was denoted in the hidden codes with a "b" set in brackets at the start and a "/b" in brackets at the end. Sound familiar?

[J N Winkler]

As I think back, it occurs to me that manipulating WP's hidden codes was very similar to manipulating this forum's codes, or to a rudimentary version of HTML. Boldfaced text, for example, was denoted in the hidden codes with a "b" set in brackets at the start and a "/b" in brackets at the end. Sound familiar?

It's called explicit markup.  HTML, bbCode/MyCode (as on this forum), XML, TeX/LaTeX, what you see when you hit Reveal Codes in WordPerfect--all of those are examples of it.

I personally use LaTeX for large projects not only because it has explicit markup, but also because the source files are plain text and thus both more portable and more amenable to low-level manipulation using string replacement tools.

[Scott5114]

The modern consensus implementation of explicit markup is called Markdown, a subset of which can be used to enter basic formatting on desktop Facebook Messenger, all versions of Discord, and Reddit, among others. The full set of Markdown symbols is much broader and is comparable to what can be achieved with base HTML with no stylesheet. Markdown syntax is designed to be short, as well, with most code invocations only one or two characters long, and with no explicit close character. (For example, a range of text to be italicized has _underscores_ on each end, while bold text has **two asterisks**.) Anyone with experience editing a wiki will find it instantly familiar. Converters to translate Markdown files to formats like PDF and HTML abound.

Markdown is not as powerful as TeX/LaTeX, but I have always found LaTeX to be needlessly fiddly, and the toolchain required to generate a nice-looking document in it to be too complex despite using the platform that features the best support for it. Thus I have never really delved into it much further than surface-level kicking of the tires. 

[hotdogPi]

I've encountered situations where Markdown-type formatting results in false positives, such as a Python course in edX where __init__ would look like init in the discussion boards.

Anyone with experience editing a wiki will find it instantly familiar.

MediaWiki, which almost all wikis use, has a completely different formatting system from Markdown.

[Dirt Roads]

Regarding Windows XP, that's newfangled. Maybe we should have a thread on which version of DOS everyone liked best. (The first PC my parents got ran IBM PC-DOS 3.30 and WordPerfect 4.2.)

Wordperfect 4.2 was so good that many of my colleagues refused to move up to Windows 3.0.   Sadly, I've forgotten all of the quick-keys for the DOS versions of WordPerfect.

I thought WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was excellent and perhaps their best DOS version. We published the Duke Law Journal using WP 5.1 for DOS. If you knew how to manipulate the hidden codes, you could do almost anything, and the software seldom crashed (not "never," but seldom). Where WP 4.2 was weak was in how it justified text. It wasn't quite sophisticated enough to space the words evenly and you'd get two spaces between some words and one space between others, all on the same line. That was a good reason not to use justification then. (I know some people still object to it. I use it, and I also use automatic hyphenation, augmented by my inserting optional hyphens and non-breaking hyphens as needed. The hyphenation reduces the white space effect to which some people object.)

Indeed.  I migrated from WP4.2 to WP5.1 at that time, but most of our computer users couldn't keep WordPerfect running on Windows 3 with the older [first generation] 386 machines.  WordPerfect was much more stable under Windows 3.1 (wasn't everything?).  But we switched over to Microsoft Word because Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows couldn't hold a candle to Microsoft Excel (and the Microsoft bundle was much cheaper).  Even then, our older secretaries never did switch to Windows and kept using WP4.2.  As soon as finished a full-time project out-of-state, I was tagged as the local System Manager (in addition to my career) because I could switch back-and-forth between DOS and Windows.  We were using [choke] Lantastic.

I've forgotten most of the WP keystrokes as well. I know Shift-F7 was Print and I think Alt-F4 was Block (that is, highlighting a block of text).

As I think back, it occurs to me that manipulating WP's hidden codes was very similar to manipulating this forum's codes, or to a rudimentary version of HTML. Boldfaced text, for example, was denoted in the hidden codes with a "b" set in brackets at the start and a "/b" in brackets at the end. Sound familiar?

Quite familiar.  I still have a copy of WordPerfect floating around for this very reason.  If you ever get the hidden codes entangled in Microsoft Word, you are doomed to an eternity in formatting hell.  Pull up that same file in WordPerfect, hit Reveal Codes and you can get back in business.  (Oftentimes, WP will correct the order of the hidden codes automatically).  I also use WP for printing out stacks of labels.  Unfortunately, I can't remember which of the old computers has WP installed.

[Scott5114]

I've encountered situations where Markdown-type formatting results in false positives, such as a Python course in edX where __init__ would look like init in the discussion boards.

Anyone with experience editing a wiki will find it instantly familiar.

MediaWiki, which almost all wikis use, has a completely different formatting system from Markdown.

I meant more that the concept of paired symbols surrounding text affecting its formatting would be familiar, not the symbols themselves. Actually, if you wanted an example of how not* to make a markup language of this style, MediaWiki would be a decent starting point; apostrophes are horribly overloaded, as are curly braces and square brackets.

Any markup language of this style will inevitably suffer from conflicts when displaying text that contains the symbols it relies on for markup. Markdown is probably the best that can be achieved in this arena, as it tends to confine itself to punctuation characters that don't see a lot of use in typical prose (unlike apostrophes or square brackets), yet are still easily input with a standard keyboard. In Markdown, triple backticks (```) can at least be used to mark a section of text as code, which disables interpretation of the text for formatting between there and the next set of triple backticks. Most of the time, it also is displayed in monospace font, which may or may not be desirable.

*(I just tried to type _not_ here, I have so thoroughly internalized Markdown at this point.)

[kkt]

non-road:
rotary phones
party lines (existed here until 1992)
writing checks

I still have a rotary phone.  Made in the 1950s or early 1960s, and still works just fine, which is more than I can say for POS cell phones that are as fragile as eggshells and designed to die inside of 5 years.

I remember party lines and as a little kid learning to use the phone and I'm sure I drove our poor neighbor on the same party line crazy until I got it right.

There are still some places that prefer (or insist upon) checks.  Credit or debit payments impose service charges on them, while checks get them the amount it says on the check.  There's a utility that I don't totally trust to take out the correct monthly payment each month without messing up, so I send them checks.  There's property tax, which will accept credit card payments but passes the service charge on to the taxpayer, so I send them checks.

I don't have either a PET or a Trash 80 but I remember them.  Not with complete fondness, but I remember them.  I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "such as" though.

[zachary_amaryllis]

Computers such as the Commodore Pet and the TRS-80 (aka the Trash 80)

i have a model 4p in the garage that still works.

[cwf1701]

  I certainly don't remember US 25 on Gratiot though, that's a little past my lifetime..

I remember when i saw the first M-3 signs on Gratiot, that was late in 1973. I also remember seeing a JCT. M-29 on the Detroit side of 8 Mile as late as 1972-73.

[Dirt Roads]

I don't have either a PET or a Trash 80 but I remember them.  Not with complete fondness, but I remember them.  I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "such as" though.

I had a TRS-80 equipped with a modem and a cassette tape drive.  I'm pretty sure that I was the only person in my dormitory that could login to the university mainframes for my first two years.  Afterwards, all engineering students had to buy a Peanut (which could also be equipped with a modem).  I wasn't an engineering student, so I didn't need one (but I got stuck trying to fix the other folks' "keyboards").

See if this brings back some memories for anybody.  Someone in my dorm had a copy of StarTraders written in Basic, and asked me to modify the software to be more realistic about galaxy patterns and related travel times across the Milky Way.  I didn't write down any of it, and lost the code once my TRS-80 went belly up.

[1995hoo]

This thread is making me recall how I came up with a WordPerfect template for the card you put in a cassette tape case listing the tracks on both sides. It was set up so you folded it on the dotted lines to have the track listing on the "cover art"  side, the title on the spine, and technical details (which noise reduction, etc.) on the other side. Then I had to rejigger it when I got a new printer during college.

I'll have to take a picture later (I'm cooking dinner as I type this). I have a ton of cassette tapes downstairs (and a Denon cassette deck that doesn't get much use).

[kkt]

I don't have either a PET or a Trash 80 but I remember them.  Not with complete fondness, but I remember them.  I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "such as" though.

I had a TRS-80 equipped with a modem and a cassette tape drive.  I'm pretty sure that I was the only person in my dormitory that could login to the university mainframes for my first two years.  Afterwards, all engineering students had to buy a Peanut (which could also be equipped with a modem).  I wasn't an engineering student, so I didn't need one (but I got stuck trying to fix the other folks' "keyboards").

See if this brings back some memories for anybody.  Someone in my dorm had a copy of StarTraders written in Basic, and asked me to modify the software to be more realistic about galaxy patterns and related travel times across the Milky Way.  I didn't write down any of it, and lost the code once my TRS-80 went belly up.

I had a Zenith Z19 terminal and a modem that allowed me to log on to the university's computers.  I couldn't afford a computer that would be powerful enough to do much of anything, but the college's computers were, well, adequate.  Slow especially when the intro class had assignments due the next day, and disk allocations that required the utmost discipline to stay within.  (Keep earlier drafts?  No way.  Print them out to refer to and type them back in if it turns out they were better!)

[kurumi]

The TRS-80 Model III had katakana characters, which seemed really random for a 1980s US computer. They were low-res (sample here: https://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/zaps-patches-pokes-tips/graphics/) and when I was a wee lad I used them for Space Invaders characters.

[hbelkins]

This thread is making me recall how I came up with a WordPerfect template for the card you put in a cassette tape case listing the tracks on both sides. It was set up so you folded it on the dotted lines to have the track listing on the "cover art"  side, the title on the spine, and technical details (which noise reduction, etc.) on the other side. Then I had to rejigger it when I got a new printer during college.

I'll have to take a picture later (I'm cooking dinner as I type this). I have a ton of cassette tapes downstairs (and a Denon cassette deck that doesn't get much use).

I drew a PageMaker template for that same thing back in the late 80s/early 90s, then discovered a Mac shareware app that produced them. Labeled a crapload of 90-minute cassettes (usually one vinyl album or CD per side) in that manner. I didn't have a car CD player at the time so I had to record my music purchases for portability.

[skluth]

Gonna really show my age here. I first learned how to program on a Basic remote terminal hooked up via modem to a mainframe 100 miles away. It looked like an old military teletype machine including the tape reader which read paper teletype tape. I'm old enough to remember storing my programs on teletype tape.

[GaryV]

... if you remember what "SneakerWare" was - and maybe participated in it.

[kkt]

... if you remember what "SneakerWare" was - and maybe participated in it.

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of floppy disks!"

Gonna really show my age here. I first learned how to program on a Basic remote terminal hooked up via modem to a mainframe 100 miles away. It looked like an old military teletype machine including the tape reader which read paper teletype tape. I'm old enough to remember storing my programs on teletype tape.

We had those teletypes.  They were discarded from a local tech company by the time the school got them.  Acoustic couple model to the HP 2000 just a few miles away, at 300 baud - to modern readers, that means slower than you could probably type.

One of them had a paper tape reader/punch, but we never had any paper tape for it.  I'm not sure it even worked.

[Rothman]

Gonna really show my age here. I first learned how to program on a Basic remote terminal hooked up via modem to a mainframe 100 miles away. It looked like an old military teletype machine including the tape reader which read paper teletype tape. I'm old enough to remember storing my programs on teletype tape.

My mother brought home punch cards from her programming on an IBM mainframe in the late 1970s.

[dlsterner]

I used punch cards myself programming on an IBM mainframe in the late 1970's.  Also 9 track data tapes for storage.

And if you know what that red plastic ring was for, you are too old



In 1981, my first personal computer had all of 48K RAM and used a consumer cassette tape recorder as its storage device.  Few years later bought a 300 baud modem.  Yes, it was slow.

[elsmere241]

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it I can't say, people just liked it better that way.

New Castle, Delaware changed names several times as it changed possessors.  I think the Dutch called it New Amstel.

[Rothman]

People just liked it better that way.

[1995hoo]

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it I can't say, people just liked it better that way.

New Castle, Delaware, changed names several times as it changed possessors.  I think the Dutch called it New Amstel.

95 calories never tasted so domestic...

[GaryV]

Gonna really show my age here. I first learned how to program on a Basic remote terminal hooked up via modem to a mainframe 100 miles away. It looked like an old military teletype machine including the tape reader which read paper teletype tape. I'm old enough to remember storing my programs on teletype tape.

My mother brought home punch cards from her programming on an IBM mainframe in the late 1970s.

I used punch cards in college, but never on the job.

My dad learned, in the 1960's, to program using a board where you plugged wires from one location to another. I never knew the theory about it. My involvement with it was to help pull out and sort (color coded by length) all the wires when the program didn't work and he had to start over.

[zachary_amaryllis]

Typing in listings from Hot CoCo magazine. I also remember cassette file storage on the old CoCo's ... the blinking "S" in the upper left corner, and praying the program would actually load before a tape dropout hosed it.

I was firmly in the TRS-80 camp. My father's old PC-1 (looks like a calculator) is still in the garage with a dead battery. I also bought a Model II at a garage sale for $10, complete with 3-disk expansion about the size of a microwave, used 8" disks. I swear the lights flickered when those drives would spin up. I think that machine had 48k ram. my last CoCo2 had 64k, but you could only use the upper 32k in machine-language programs since they would clobber BASIC.

[Dirt Roads]

I still have my "coding card" for IBM OS/360 Assembler Language.  Indeed, there were several times in my career that I had to pull it out when debugging with data dumps.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/414823815654139325/