#teco — Public Fediverse posts

I ran across and scanned an old document recently that describes the command set for TECO-based Emacs on the MIT ITS operating system in the very early 1980s, probably, although the document is not dated.

I think I either produced it, or had a hand in how it was produced. But in any case, the grouping and layout suits me in terms of describing why certain commands are related to one another, and making it easier to see why particular letters were chosen as mnemonics.

TECO was the language Emacs was originally implemented in, before it was ported to gnu. ITS was an MIT-written operating system for the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-10, a main frame processor whose architecture also spanned the TOPS-20 operating system (though I'm blurring some details).

http://nhplace.com/kent/History/emacs/Emacs-Command-Index.pdf

This is part of an ongoing project where I'm sifting some things in boxes at my house, trying to get rid of stuff I don't need. Some of it is getting scanned, other things just going to the trash.

#emacs #ComputerHistory #ITS #TECO #Lisp #KentsHistoryProject

A brief history and introduction to the TECO text editor on TOPS-10.

https://timereshared.com/tops-10-teco-editor

#TECO #dec #editor #retrocomputing

#ChatGPT has learned all of my bad #TECO habits; I find that strangely satisfying.

@AbramKedge yup! That was UK.AC.ESSEX.KL10. I was the last user on it, apart from Rick, the systems manager, who shut it down for the last time around me checking I'd saved everything for the 30th time.

TOPS-10 was a great operating system although I am worried why my muscle memory seems to have remembered #TECO so well.

Pickett USA Data Breach Exposes Critical Infrastructure Data https://dailydarkweb.net/pickett-usa-data-breach-exposes-critical-infrastructure-data/ #CriticalInfrastructure #AmericanElectricPower #PickettandAssociates #DataBreaches #UnitedStates #engineering #databreach #DukeEnergy #PickettUSA #LiDARData #TECO

Los origenes de TECO, por su principal creador, Dan Murphy:
gopher://texto-plano.xyz/0/~peron/docs/origenes_teco.txt
#gopher #teco #retrocomputo

@ed1conf @nixCraft Kids these days. #TECO

@tmmj No dissing 6! It's a fantastic editor :P

I wrote a guide for our BT systems people back in about 1995 (although the one I have says 1997):

https://shonky.systems/Docs/vi.html

Everything you need to know, innit!

I tried to do one for TECO too, it was not a great success, but I think I may remain the only person to have ever tried.

https://shonky.systems/Docs/teco.html

#TECO #EMACS #vi #ed #BT #Writing

@northernlights My peak productivity was with #edt/ #ked on #vt102. From there #ex/ #vi felt like a step down and so #vim/ #neovim remains a path never to be taken. Ported my own #microemacs around for some time. These days will use #pico/ #nano for quick things, #emacs otherwise or because #slime. Had #brief (😜 ) run-in with #teco, memory of which is buried, because trauma, granting only a bonus giggle reading "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal". Didn't #notepad win the #editor war in the end?

@dougmerritt @northernlights @kentpitman @SDF @nosrednayduj @sacha @hairylarry @pkw @rat @pizzapal

Thanks for the incredible #interview and episode Kent Pitman and everyone ! Lots of #lisp #emacs #teco #programming #lore #unique #historicalNotes

https://archives.anonradio.net/202502120000_screwtape.mp3

(One hour)

Please do ping Kent (and me!) about topics you are particularly interested in Kent following up on in later interviews, or releasing from his personal software stockpiles.

Every week 0UTC Wednesadys on anonradio

#lispyGopherClimate @kentpitman #live #interview #computerScience #programming #lisp #commonLisp #python with some special announcements and releases.
#teco #emacs #conditions

https://archives.anonradio.net/202502120000_screwtape.mp3

#archive Thanks for the incredible interview and livechat everyone!

Interview 1 / ?

Please drop questions here beforehand or join us live in #lambdaMOO as always !
telnet lambda.moo.mud.org 8888
co guest
@join screwtape

@nosrednayduj @sacha @hairylarry @pkw @rat @pizzapal

@screwtape @kentpitman very interesting I'll drop by and ask about #TECO

@olav @dcz this feature came from #teco and was standard practice on DEC PDP, the pagination character notifies the text editor where to stop loading the file so files with size more than the available computer memory, often stored on magnetic tape or paper tape, can be edited.

Florida Power Companies Seek $1.55 Billion From Customers To Cover Hurricane Recovery Costs
#duke #teco #climate

https://flip.it/uu0g7-

@screwtape

This will be very rambly and informal and free-format and approximate, but someone might like it...

TECO has been around a long time. It was certainly around when I arrived on the MIT scene 1977-ish. But probably a long time before.

You asked what people used as a screen editor and I have to laugh. TECO was not really a screen editor, but was the implementation substrate for original Emacs. I'll tell the story I know.

TECO had commands that were single character (mostly, though some composed) and you did a set of commands and then could ask to see what you did. Usually, because it also worked on a paper terminal (which recorded everything you typed onto reams of paper), you saw maybe one line of context and then made some change. Some people did really long lives with entire defuns on one line. But it kind of didn't matter. c was the command to move foward. d to delete a character. 3c-4d would go forward 3 characters and delete 4 characters backward. You ended your command with Esc Esc (which echoed as $$) so 3c-4d$$ would show you the edited line and then you'd do more. A single Esc was a command separator or terminator, but two caused it to go.

You could put "macros" (really just strings of commands) in a thing called a q-register (really just a variable, except primitive Teco had no variables). The q-registers were so-called because they were named q0, q1, etc. and also qA, qB, ... qZ. You could put something in them with u. 5uA puts 5 into qA. Some commands were modifiable with @ or : (like in format strings in CL). So while ifoo$ would insert foo into the buffer at the current point, :i05c-4d$ would not insert anything in the buffer but would instead insert '5c-4d' into q0. So once you have strings in q registers you could execute them with m, as in m0 which would execute my sample string from above.

At some point, they changed it on glass (non-paper) screens to show you the buffer as edited, but still it was not doing the WYSIWYG thing. You saw part of a buffer with /\ as a cursor. So /\foo if the cursor was before foo. And Steele suggested that if there was a q-register assigned to each key, you could have it run that macro on hitting that key, which was the origin of emacs ^R (control-R) mode, ^R being the command that would get you into it. R for "real-time" mode. Stallman implemented it. I don't know who thought up the naming, probably Stallman.

The key bindings were on specially named new q-registers that had dots in their names. I think q^RA, q^RB, etc. where ^R was a control-R character. For control-A, q^R.A, for meta-A, q^R..A, etc. and for c-m-A q^R...A, so that allowed binding all the keys.

And at that point you had a realtime mode that was emacs-like. People could have init files that loaded up any of the q-registers with their own bindings, and there were library formats created so people could pre-load complicated definitions.

There was a lot of competition for whose library bindings would win out. Emacs was not the only early offering. Whole other packagings were available from various people. But eventually there was a mostly-consensus on a lot of it, and the rest became libraries on that.

TECO, especially the MIT variant, looks a bit like line noise since nearly every character was a command. But fortunately in libraries the style was to include code on the first half of the line and use the last half of the line as a comment explaining it. Here's a pointer to a library I wrote in TECO that tried to emulate some of the Lisp Machine's mail reader Zmail. If you want to see how the language worked by just kind of letting it roll past you.

https://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/mit_emacs_170_teco_1220/01/emacs/zbabyl.emacs.html

#LispyGopher #TECO #history

For #TECO residents in #Florida, remember, you can text 27079 to get stats on outages for your address. It uses phone number you text from to look up your records. If power is out, text "stat" and it will give you records regarding outages affecting you and expected time(s). You can also report outages by using "stat". This is much faster than trying to use their website and/or customer service phone number!

#HurricaneHelene #Hurricane #Helene

@Brad_Rosenheim Stay safe! We're about 50 miles inland (Polk County). #TECO power has been great in the last year or so and we've lost power very little during storms/hurricanes (after Ian).

Kudos needs to go to them for really really improving the power structure here after Ian! Here's hoping we'll be okay during #HurricaneHelene!

Gotta love that headline...

"Tampa Electric is seeking...a midpoint of 11.5%, higher than what any electric utility around the nation has been approved to earn in at least the last year and a half, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights...and the highest requested profit rate of any pending rate case in the country"

#EnergyMastodon #EnergyTransition #Climate #Florida #TECO

https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/2024/09/03/teco-tampa-electric-utility-hearing-bills-increase-rate-hike/

When #StructuredProgramming was a new thing, it was more often for people using it to make mistakes than writing programming with go to's. The structured version of the program from #TECO manual has a mistake that prevents it from work, can you spot it? (Answer in the reply)

#programming #challenge