r...@rtech.com reb%rtec...@lll-winken.llnl.GOV
h:861 Washington Westwood NJ 07675 201-666-9207
I've been warped by the rain,
driven by the snow drunk and dirty don't you know and I'm still willin'...
}Does the word "xyzzy" have an origin earlier than the Colossal Cave adventure
}game? Where exactly did it come from?
I believe that Will just made it up [much as he made up near everything else
in Adventure]. I can ask him, but I'm really quite sure that it was just
random-letters.
/Bernie\
On I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas there is a road with the
name Xyyzzy or something very similar (I fly nowadays and so haven't
seen it in a while) This may be where he got the word but I have no
way of verifying it.
jpo...@ucsd.edu
jpo...@ucsd.bitnet
--
Mark Komarinski - take yer pick - koma...@clutx.clarkson.edu
.bitnet
"Cassette users tip of the month - buy a disk drive" - from Dos Boss manual
Actually it is Zzyzx Road. Whatever the hell that is.
spl (the p stands for
put a lot of miles on
the RX-7 between San
Diego and Vegas...)
--
Steve Lamont, sciViGuy (919) 248-1120 EMail: s...@ncsc.org
NCSC, Box 12732, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
"That's People's Commissioner Tirebiter -- and NOBODY'S sweetheart!"
- F. Scott Firesign
While this actually has nothing to do with folklore, I decided
to answer it here since this is where the original question was.
Beagle Brothers has had TREMENDOUS success with its TimeOut
series of enhancements for AppleWorks [I think the best selling software
EVER]... Now they even have screen credit for parts of AppleWorks 3.0.
They have gotten out of the BASIC enhancements, but still publish
some of them. The ones they don't publish anymore, they HAVE PUT ON THEIR
BULLETIN BOARD for people to download for free. No, I don't know the #.
I thought that their catalogs were hilarious too (the only thing
I ever bought from them was one of the posters, I think it was Peeks,
Pokes, and Pointers... which I have in front of me on the wall along with
the APPLE COMMANDS one and the 6502 Instructions one, which people gave to
me)...
Their newest catalog, alas, has gotten "really business-y looking".
They -still- include a fair # of funny cartoons though, but none of the
neat little BASIC programs written between ads.. Those were cool.
I guess their growth has gotten them to "grow up" in some people's
opinion. Alas, I liked them a lot better the way they were before. They're
still pretty neat though.
--
If you want info about a 20 meg "floptical" drive mail me. YOU CAN ALSO
GET ONE FOR --$440-- (NEW **LOWER** PRICE!) BY MAILING ME. [WE HAVE TO GET
ENOUGH PEOPLE THOUGH..Slightly higher for less people but not much]
unk...@ucscb.ucsc.edu APPLE II FOREVER APL24VR GS tips? Mail me.
unknown%darksi...@ames.arpa Please use the former address for regular use.
(I used to live out that way . . .)
(This is rapidly devolving into
"alt.folklore.computers.and.other.trivia" :-)
Sam'l Bassett, Sterling Software @ NASA Ames Research Center,
Moffett Field CA 94035 Work: (415) 694-4792; Home: (415) 969-2644
sa...@well.sf.ca.us sa...@ames.arc.nasa.gov
<Disclaimer> := 'Sterling doesn't _have_ opinions -- much less NASA!'
just curious,
nancy
"I love you" is just another word for death.
Emacs
Makes
A
Computer
Slow.
Mark Brown IBM AWD / OSF | If a train station is where
The Good mbr...@osf.org | a train stops,
The Bad uunet!osf!mbrown| What happens at
The Ugly (617) 621-8981 | a work station?
Well, that's harsh! More accurately, Extensible MACro.
My favorites were on the LISP Machine: EINE and ZWEI
Eine
Is
Not
Emacs
and
Zwei
Was
Emacs (or Eine?)
Initially
Self-recursive acronyms, plus the series iterates, in German anyway.
Ahhh...recursion. That explains it.
> Mark Brown IBM AWD / OSF | If a train station is where
>
> The Good mbr...@osf.org | a train stops,
> The Bad uunet!osf!mbrown| What happens at
> The Ugly (617) 621-8981 | a work station?
Pixel cooleyra@clutx. clarkson.edu | bitnet
"Keep the wind in your solar sails..." --Glenn Clapp
"here log (ln) changes to a different log (log)" (no reason given) --A.Fokas
Disclaimer: opinions==mine; me<>cct
From the file etc/emacs.names in the GNU Emacs distribution:
|| From: harvard!topaz!BLUE!BRAIL@mit-eddie
|| Date: 9 Sep 85 17:25:27 EDT
|| Subject: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| To: mit-prep!info-gn...@TOPAZ.RUTGERS.EDU
||
|| EMACS may stand for "Editing MACroS," but some friends of mine
|| suggested some more creative definitions. Here they are. Anyone have
|| any additions?
||
|| --------
||
|| Even a
|| Master of
|| Arts
|| Comes
|| Simpler
||
|| Emacs
|| Manuals
|| Are
|| Cryptic and
|| Surreal
||
|| Energetic
|| Merchants
|| Always
|| Cultivate
|| Sales
||
|| Each
|| Manual's
|| Audience is
|| Completely
|| Stupified
||
|| Emacs
|| Means
|| A
|| Crappy
|| Screen
||
|| Eventually
|| Munches
|| All
|| Computer
|| Storage
||
|| Even
|| My
|| Aunt
|| Crashes the
|| System
||
|| Eradication of
|| Memory
|| Accomplished with
|| Complete
|| Simplicity
||
|| Elsewhere
|| Maybe
|| Alternative
|| Civilizations
|| Survive
||
|| Egregious
|| Managers
|| Actively
|| Court
|| Stallman
||
|| Esoteric
|| Malleability
|| Always
|| Considered
|| Silly
||
|| Emacs
|| Manuals
|| Always
|| Cause
|| Senility
||
|| Easily
|| Maintained with the
|| Assistance of
|| Chemical
|| Solutions
||
|| EMACS
|| MACRO
|| ACTED
|| CREDO
|| SODOM
||
|| Edwardian
|| Manifestation of
|| All
|| Colonial
|| Sins
||
|| Generally
|| Not
|| Used
||
|| Except by
|| Middle
|| Aged
|| Computer
|| Scientists
||
|| Extended
|| Macros
|| Are
|| Considered
|| Superfluous
||
|| Every
|| Mode
|| Accelerates
|| Creation of
|| Software
||
|| Elsewhere
|| Maybe
|| All
|| Commands are
|| Simple
||
|| Emacs
|| May
|| Allow
|| Customised
|| Screwups
||
|| Excellent
|| Manuals
|| Are
|| Clearly
|| Suppressed
||
|| Emetic
|| Macros
|| Assault
|| Core and
|| Segmentation
||
|| Embarrassed
|| Manual-Writer
|| Accused of
|| Communist
|| Subversion
||
|| Extensibilty and
|| Modifiability
|| Aggravate
|| Confirmed
|| Simpletons
||
|| Emacs
|| May
|| Annihilate
|| Command
|| Structures
||
|| Easily
|| Mangles,
|| Aborts,
|| Crashes and
|| Stupifies
||
|| Extraneous
|| Macros
|| And
|| Commands
|| Stink
||
|| Exceptionally
|| Mediocre
|| Algorithm for
|| Computer
|| Scientists
||
|| EMACS
|| Makes no
|| Allowances
|| Considering its
|| Stiff price
||
|| Equine
|| Mammals
|| Are
|| Considerably
|| Smaller
||
|| Embarrasingly
|| Mundane
|| Advertising
|| Cuts
|| Sales
||
|| Every
|| Moron
|| Assumes
|| CCA is
|| Superior
||
|| Exceptionally
|| Mediocre
|| Autocratic
|| Control
|| System
||
|| EMACS
|| May
|| Alienate
|| Clients and
|| Supporters
||
|| Excavating
|| Mayan
|| Architecture
|| Comes
|| Simpler
||
|| Erasing
|| Minds
|| Allows
|| Complete
|| Submission
||
|| Every
|| Male
|| Adolescent
|| Craves
|| Sex
||
|| Elephantine
|| Memory
|| Absolutely
|| Considered
|| Sine que non
||
|| Emacs
|| Makers
|| Are
|| Crazy
|| Sickos
||
|| Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Mo-
|| Macros
|| Are
|| Completely
|| Slow
||
|| Experience the
|| Mildest
|| Ad
|| Campaign ever
|| Seen
||
|| Emacs
|| Makefiles
|| Annihilate
|| C-
|| Shells
||
|| Eradication of
|| Memory
|| Accomplished with
|| Complete
|| Simplicity
||
|| Emetic
|| Macros
|| Assault
|| Core and
|| Segmentation
||
|| Epileptic
|| MLisp
|| Aggravates
|| Compiler
|| Seizures
||
|| Eleven thousand
|| Monkeys
|| Asynchronously
|| Crank out these
|| Slogans
|| -------
||
|| From: ihnss!warren@mit-eddie (Warren Montgomery)
|| Newsgroups: net.emacs
|| Subject: Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 09:14:24 EDT
|| Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
|| Apparently-To: emacs-netnews-distribution@mit-prep
||
|| Someone at a luncheon suggested it meant:
||
|| Evenings,
|| Mornings,
|| And a
|| Couple of
|| Saturdays
||
|| (In reference to the odd hours that went into the creation of my
|| implementation).
||
|| --
||
|| Warren Montgomery
|| ihnss!warren
|| IH ((312)-979) x2494
||
|| Date: Wed, 18 Sep 85 10:11:04 edt
|| From: inmet!to...@inmet.inmet (Leonard H. Tower Jr.) <inmet!tower@cca-unix>
|| Subject: Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| To: to...@MIT-PREP.ARPA
||
|| Received: by inmet.uucp (4.12/inmet) id AA02199; Wed, 18 Sep 85 09:10:17 edt
|| Date: Wed, 18 Sep 85 09:10:17 edt
|| Message-Id: <8509181310.AA02199@inmet.uucp>
|| Uucp-Paths: {bellcore,ima,ihnp4}!inmet!tower
|| Arpa-Path: ima!inmet!to...@CCA-UNIX.ARPA
|| Organization: Intermetrics, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA
|| Home: 36 Porter Street, Somerville, MA 02143, USA +1 (617) 623-7739
|| /* Written 6:48 pm Sep 14, 1985 by gml@ssc-vax in inmet:net.emacs */
|| /* ---------- "Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?" ---------- */
|| Pleeeeeeeze!!! Nice try on the meaning of EMACS. I believe the
|| correct acronym is:
||
|| Emacs
|| Makes
|| All
|| Computing
|| Simple
||
|| Thank you, and Good Night
|| /* End of text from inmet:net.emacs */
||
|| From: ho95e!wcs@mit-eddie (Bill.Stewart.4K435.x0705)
|| Newsgroups: net.emacs
|| Subject: Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 21:43:54 EDT
|| Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
|| Apparently-To: emacs-netnews-distribution@mit-prep
||
|| > > very interesting, but what does GNU stand for ?
|| > GNU = Gnu's Not UNIX. There is also MINCE, for Mince Is Not a Complete Emacs.
|| > More recursive acronyms, anyone?
|| Many people have also seen FINE Is Not Emacs, but the one that has
|| character is THief Isn't Even Fine.
|| --
|| ## Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs
||
|| Path: mit-eddie!think!harvard!bbnccv!bbncca!linus!decvax!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!edison!ta2
|| From: edison!ta2@mit-eddie (tom allebrandi)
|| Newsgroups: net.emacs
|| Subject: Re: Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| Date: Sun, 29-Sep-85 18:11:55 EDT
|| Organization: General Electric's Mountain Resort
|| Apparently-To: emacs-netnews-distribution@mit-prep
||
|| > GNU = Gnu's Not UNIX. There is also MINCE, for Mince Is Not a Complete Emacs.
|| >
|| > More recursive acronyms, anyone?
|| >
||
|| For the DEC-system-10/20: FINE - Fine Is Not Emacs.....
||
|| --
|| ...............
|| tom allebrandi 2, general electric aco, charlottesville, va
|| {decvax,duke}!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!edison!ta2
|| box 8106, charlottesville, va, 22906
|| (804) 978-5566
|| ...............
||
|| Date: Wed, 16 Oct 85 01:38:12 edt
|| From: inmet!tower (Leonard H. Tower Jr.) <inmet!tower@cca-unix>
|| Subject: more names
|| To: to...@MIT-PREP.ARPA
||
|| Received: by inmet.uucp (4.12/inmet) id AA12997; Tue, 15 Oct 85 22:31:39 edt
|| Date: Tue, 15 Oct 85 22:31:39 edt
|| Message-Id: <851016023...@inmet.uucp>
|| Uucp-Paths: {bellcore,ima,ihnp4}!inmet!tower
|| Arpa-Path: ima!inmet!to...@CCA-UNIX.ARPA
|| Organization: Intermetrics, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA
|| Home: 36 Porter Street, Somerville, MA 02143, USA +1 (617) 623-7739
|| /* Written 12:20 pm Oct 14, 1985 by r...@mirror.UUCP in inmet:net.emacs */
||
||
|| SINE: Sine Is Not Emacs
|| (MIT Architecture Machine Group)
||
|| EINE: Eine is Not Emacs
|| (MIT Lisp Machine)
||
|| ZWEI: Zwei Was Eine Initially
|| ("rev2" of EINE)
||
|| --
|| Rich $alz {mit-eddie, ihnp4!inmet, wjh12, cca, datacube} !mirror!rs
|| Mirror Systems 2067 Massachusetts Ave.
|| 617-661-0777 Cambridge, MA, 02140
|| /* End of text from inmet:net.emacs */
||
|| Path: mit-eddie!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!gatech!ulysses!pajb
|| From: ulysses!pajb@mit-eddie (Paul Bennett)
|| Newsgroups: net.emacs
|| Subject: Here we go again ...
|| Date: Sat, 19-Oct-85 17:26:49 EDT
|| Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
|| Apparently-To: emacs-netnews-distribution@mit-prep
||
||
|| > EINE: Eine is Not Emacs
|| > (MIT Lisp Machine)
|| >
|| > ZWEI: Zwei Was Eine Initially
|| > ("rev2" of EINE)
||
|| DREI: DREI - Really Emacs Inside
|| (Exists only in my head)
||
|| Paul.
||
|| UUCP: {decvax,allegra,vax135,ucbvax}!ulysses!circe!pajb
|| DDD: (201) 582 7346
|| USPS: AT&T Bell Labs, Room 5E-103, Murray Hill, NJ 07974
||
|| .. I don't care WHO you are, you're not walking on the water while I'M fishing.--
|| Paul.
||
|| UUCP: {decvax,allegra,vax135,ucbvax}!ulysses!circe!pajb
|| DDD: (201) 582 7346
|| USPS: AT&T Bell Labs, Room 5E-103, Murray Hill, NJ 07974
||
|| .. I don't care WHO you are, you're not walking on the water while I'M fishing.
Just another Emacs hacker,
--
/== Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ====\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III |
| mer...@iwarp.intel.com ...!uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn |
\== Cute Quote: "Welcome to Oregon... Home of the California Raisins!" ==/
For a Previous Employer, I had to write an easily-usable-by-VMS-and-other-
business-weenies editor (that ran on the Lispm) which was named: DRIE
DRIE
Really
Isn't
EDT
NICHAEL
(...and, yes, I know it isn't spelled right.)
Editing MACroS.
Work on EMACS started in the summer of 1976. The people who worked on
it primarily at that time were Guy Steele, Richard Stallman, and Dave
Moon.
EMACS was written in TECO, but not the TECO that most people know.
Most people know a very stripped-down and bastardized TECO which Bob
Clements adapted for the DEC operating system for the PDP-6. The
original TECO was written by Dan Murphy for the PDP-1, and later
reimplemented on the PDP-6 (by, if I remember correctly, Richard
Greenblatt, Jack Holloway, and Tom Knight in a single weekend!). The
original TECO used a display scope to display the text being edited
around the editing point. It remained a source of wonder and
astonishment to the original authors of TECO that anyone ever used it
without a display screen. This TECO ran on MIT's operating system for
the PDP-6 and PDP-10, ITS (Incompatible TimeSharing).
At Stanford, a different track of display editors had developed, again
starting with the display scope on the PDP-1. The two surviving today
are TVEDIT for Tenex/TOPS-20 and E for WAITS. Richard Stallman
visited the Stanford AI Lab and was impressed by E's real-time editing
facility. When he returned to MIT, he implemented so-called "^R mode"
(a real time editing mode in TECO invoked by the CTRL/R command) in
TECO.
Although ^R mode made a whole new style of editing possible (unlike E
and TVEDIT, the default action for newly typed in text was insert
rather than replace), it was still rather primitive. The search was
for a single character only, and you would still have to go back to
TECO to do lots of things (such as read or write files!).
Two major sets of TECO macro packages (a "macro" is a program, written
in TECO, stored in a TECO register) developed; TECMAC and TMACS.
TECMAC was a more real-time editor, while TMACS had a much richer set
of functionality including named commands. Just about everybody had
their own customizations on top of these packages.
This was the situation when I worked at MIT in the summer of '76. I
had brought with me my own favorite TECO-style editor, which, although
it had only the functionality of primitive DEC TECO, had two
interesting facilities: (1) it compiled all TECO programs (including
commands) prior to execution, and (2) it had multi-character register
names, which greatly increased the number of possible TECO registers
to virtually infinite.
Richard Stallman implemented the latter in TECO as part of the EMACS
project, which was originally intended as a replacement for both
TECMAC and TMACS. By New Years in 1977 EMACS had made significant
inroads against TECMAC/TMACS; and in another year or so the older
editors had both succumbed to software rot.
Michael McMahon was irritated at the editor situation for Tenex and
TOPS-20; the alternatives at that time ranged from TVEDIT to QED to TV
(a DEC TOPS-20 TECO-like program with display terminal functionality
much like that of the 1964 MIT TECO). He undertook the long and
laborious task of porting MIT EMACS from ITS to Tenex and TOPS-20, and
by 1978 EMACS was running on a small set of Tenex and TOPS-20 systems
at MIT, Stanford, and SRI. Richard Stallman did heroic efforts to
propagate the mass (and free) distribution to just about every TOPS-20
system in the work.
This guaranteed EMACS a place in the sun. Without McMahon and
Stallman's efforts we'd probably all be using vi or worse today.
In the 1980's, TOPS-20 had reached its zenith. Because of horribly
high maintenance costs (DEC was trying to shut down the product line
in favor of VAX/VMS, and finally did in 1983), many sites were
migrating from TOPS-20. Not trusting DEC, many sites picked UNIX as
their migration path instead of VMS. There were a few critical
TOPS-20 tools which "must" be ported before the migration; and one of
those was EMACS.
The rest is well-known...
_____ ____ ---+--- /-\ Mark Crispin Atheist & Proud
_|_|_ _|_ || ___|__ / / 6158 Lariat Loop NE R90/6 pilot
|_|_|_| /|\-++- |=====| / / Bainbridge Island, WA "Gaijin! Gaijin!"
--|-- | |||| |_____| / \ USA 98110-2098 "Gaijin ha doko ka?"
/|\ | |/\| _______ / \ +1 (206) 842-2385 "Niichan ha gaijin."
/ | \ | |__| / \ / \ m...@CAC.Washington.EDU "Chigau. Gaijin ja nai.
kisha no kisha ga kisha de kisha-shita Omae ha gaijin darou."
sumomo mo momo, momo mo momo, momo ni mo iroiro aru "Iie, boku ha nihonjin."
uraniwa ni wa niwa, niwa ni wa niwa niwatori ga iru "Souka. Yappari gaijin!"
It is one of those clever recursive acronyms:
EMACS Makes All Computers Slow
:-)
spl (the p stands for
press
ctrl-meta-left-elbow
to change all
occurrences of foo to
bar...)
M I N C E
I s o o m
N t m a
C p s
E l
e
t
e
Evil
Manifestation
Also
Called
Satan
P.S. - I love EMACS (I'm using it now!) I just like the acronym!
Insert :-)'s where you feel they are needed.
--
Skate UNIX
J. Eric Townsend -- uunet!sugar!flatline!jet -- j...@flatline.lonestar.org
EastEnders mailing list -- east...@flatline.lonestar.org
One day as I was driving home from an Amateur Radio Convention in L.V. (anybody
here remember SAROC?), a friend of mine and I decided we had a few extra
hours to kill, so we did some exploring. Zzyzx road north of the freeway
goes nowhere - a dead end maybe 1/4 mile from the ramp. Southbound the
pavement ends the same 1/4 mile, but a well maintained (in '80 or so) dirt
road goes for about 30 minutes and with just around a blind turn ends
at a barbed-wire-and-2x4s gate. My '69 Rambler, at that time, had a cracked
exhaust manifold and the noise brought a gentleman out of a run-down house
trailer with a shotgun in his hands (this was about 3pm or so). Don and I
were smart enough to make no sudden moves and after we explained we were
just curious what Zzyzx was, the gentleman put the gun down and invited us
in for coffee & cokes. It turns out that Zzyzx was a '30s hot springs
resort that went broke, and the gentleman lived there in a trailer as a
gurad for the buildings, which were in surprisingly good shape (at least
the exteriors - Don and I didn't ask if we could get a tour, and none
was offered). Supposedly a fleet of busses ran from LA's Union Rail
Station to ZZyzx and back, and the 30s movie stars were the most frequent
guests. There is no ACpower, no telephone, and communications is limited
to commercial two-way radio (nowadays cellular phones would work there too),
and CB.
All this is 9-10 year old memory, and unverified.
Mike Morris Internet: Mor...@Jade.JPL.NASA.gov
Misslenet: 34.12 N, 118.02 W
#Include quote.cute.standard Bellnet: 818-447-7052
#Include disclaimer.standard Radionet: WA6ILQ
j...@flatline.UUCP (It's "Mr. Boyo" to you Dylan):
> "Emacs Makes A Computer Slow". It's recursive, too!
In a similar vein, how about "Eats Memory And Compromises Security"?
Jeff d'Arcy OS/Network Software Engineer jda...@encore.com
Encore has provided the medium, but the message remains my own
I don't know where it came from, but my daughter was once playing
another adventure game (Isle of {something}) and typed it. She got back
the response "We do not recycle used magic words from other games."
Broke us up.
--
bill davidsen - sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
davi...@sixhub.uucp ...!uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen
"Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon
It may be just coincidence, but on the road from Las Vegas to Barstow,
CA are several large green signs for "Zzyzx Road." I believe the
actual road was just rocks and dirt. Giving someone directions could
be problematical due to nonlinear pronounciation :-)
- Steve.
One of my professors has taken up a liking to these kinds of acronyms.
His favorite: XINU
Xinu
Is
Not
Unix
My personal favorite is Douglas Hofstadter's TATO:
Tato (And Tato Only)
Double your recursion, double your pleasure...
Side note (intended to get the line of discussion even further off the track):
Why Tato? Simple. He wanted to use it in conjunction with a non-recursively
acronymed function "hotpo" (Half Or Triple Plus One; N/2 for even N, 3N+1
for odd N). Thus he could write a Lisp statement:
(hotpo tato)
Arrrrrrghhhhhhh......
Kevin Podsiadlik g...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
"There. That looks good. We should have this .sig ready by Valentine's Day."
> Emacs > Makes > A > Computer > Slow.
Actually, if you look in /usr/include/errno.h, you'll see that it's a UNIX
error code: EMACS -- Editor Too Large.
--
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com>
`-_-'
'U` "I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere"
Not bad. Typing in 'PLUGH' in Level 9's Snowball invoked a robot which
accused you of insanity and then threw the player into a padded cell in
the game. Most level 9 games gave some sort of response to the old
Crowther and Woods magic words.
>In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
>What does Emacs mean?
My favorite one is the following:
Escape Meta Alt Control Shift
No, I'm not the author of that; someone posted it in the usenet some months ago.
--
Georg Wittig GMD-Z1.BI P.O. Box 1240 D-5205 St. Augustin 1 (West Germany)
email: wit...@gmdzi.uucp phone: (+49 2241) 14-2294
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" (Kris Kristofferson)
I always heard it was ``Eventually Mallocs All Computer Storage''
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott D. Yelich sc...@cs.odu.edu [128.82.8.1]
After he pushed me off the cliff, he asked me, as I fell, ``Why'd you jump?''
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the projects inside Tektronix was called "TINA" for "This Is No
Acronym".
And, another document I had read at Tek mentioned the use of "TLAs",
which was defined in the footnote (in tiny print) as "Three Letter
Acronyms".
Just another person who got their college education at Tek :-),
Eight
Megs
And
Continuous
Swapping
--
Dale P. Smith
da...@ncoast.org
ncoast!da...@hal.cwru.edu
uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!dale
"When you're serious about having | Robert Menke
fun, it's not much fun at all!" | r...@OCF.berkeley.edu
-- Calvin & Hobbes | Robert...@bmug.fidonet.org
TEAM CS -- Making Tomorrow's Mistakes Today!
There's a similar message in the original ADVENT (only 6 character program
names under RSTS/E). If you typed in "abracadabra" it responded with
"Nice try, but that is an old, worn-out magic word."
--
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, holl...@ttidca.tti.com) Illegitimis non
Citicorp(+)TTI Carborundum
3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 450-9111, x2483
Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun | philabs | psivax}!ttidca!hollombe
--
Kevin Carothers {philabs,csun,psivax}!ttidca!kevin
~
My favorite is "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping". Another is
"Escape-Meta-Control-Alt-Shift". One friend says it means "Eventually Might
Alter Console Screen", but I didn't like that one all that much.
Thomas V. Frauenhofer ...!rutgers!rochester!cci632!ccird7!tvf *or*
...!attctc!swamps!frau!tvf (tvf@frau, tvf@cci632) Daffy Duck Sings:
"I once knew an acrobat's daughter who swung by her teeth from a noose. 'Til
one day her bridgework gave way, and she flew through the air like a Goose!"
Much as I hate to do this:
<=>tera<=>ls -l /usr/ucb/vi /usr/local/bin/me
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root 122880 Jan 7 15:47 /usr/local/bin/microemacs*
-rwxr-xr-x 6 root 147456 Apr 24 1989 /usr/ucb/vi*
As I remember it, Scott Adams was the first to write a text adventure
game for a microcomputer (the TRS-80 Model I), after being inspired by
the original FORTRAN Adventure, and being told that it couldn't be
done. He wrote, in BASIC, a program to create a data file which
described an adventure game, along with another BASIC program to
interpret the data file and play the game. Later it was all recoded
in assembler, and ported to other machines. I believe he eventually
came out with around 15 games.
BYTE published an article quite a few years ago which detailed the
history of his games, and included a listing of the original BASIC
version of his adventure interpreter, along with the listing of one of
the early adventures.
BTW, this is all via my somewhat fuzzy memory, since it's been a
couple of years since I've seen the article.
I do recall quite vividly, however, playing the games on my brother's
Atari 800, after waiting around 20 minutes for them to load from
cassette tape. Long live disk drives!!
Lane l...@usl.edu ...!texbell!rouge!lar
I'm fairly certain he didn't write the original. He did, however, release
a series of pretty good adventure games thru Adventure International (do they
still exist?) and an adventure game creator.
Don't know what he's up to now.
--
David L. Newton | uunet!marque!carroll1!dnewton
(414) 524-7343 (work) | dne...@carroll1.cc.edu
(414) 524-6809 (home) | 100 NE Ave, Waukesha WI 53186
I think Zork says "That's an old worn out magic word. Try another," when you
try typing in xyzzy.
reb
r...@rtech.com reb%rtec...@lll-winken.llnl.GOV
h:861 Washington Westwood NJ 07675 201-666-9207
Just say 'NO!' to rugs
This message sponsored by the American Hardwood Floor Association.
To kill Emacs, type @kbd(C-x C-c) (@code(save-buffers-kill-emacs).
A two character key is used for this to make it harder to type.
Emacs happens to be my favorite editor, and yes the above is understandable to
those who use it.
NJC
=Bill=
Nah, its "Escape Meta Alt Control Shift"
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Scott McLeod, Quotron (UK) "paranoia is total awareness" |
| Phone: +44 1 353 6723 email: sc...@quotnet.co.uk |
| Fax: +44 1 353 6689 or ..ukc!qtnet!scott |
>Not bad. Typing in 'PLUGH' in Level 9's Snowball invoked a robot which...
That's strange.. PLUGH was the 'magic' word in one of the origional
adventure games, Pyramid 2000, written for the TRS-80 model I
It wasn't really all that magical.. it just rearranged the directions
so that north was actually east.. etc.. Thereby confusing the user.
Dave
| David Barr | I did! I did! I did saw a puddy tat!! |
| DSB...@psuvm.psu.edu | Where's the kaboom? There was supposed |
| DSB100@psuvm | to be an earth-shattering kaboom! |
| 7214...@compuserve.com |
| There's too much blood in my alcohol system! |
Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping
--
adam margulies metaware incorporated
INTERNET: ad...@metaware.com
UUCP: uunet!metaware!adam
ATT: (408)429-META x3016
> That's strange.. PLUGH was the 'magic' word in one of the origional
> adventure games, Pyramid 2000, written for the TRS-80 model I
> It wasn't really all that magical.. it just rearranged the directions
> so that north was actually east.. etc.. Thereby confusing the user.
Not so strange. PLUGH is another magic word originating in Adventure.
(It's used to teleport between "Y2" and the wellhouse.) This is
evidently another example of a creative reuse of a magic word.
peace. -- Ed
>>> > > What does Emacs mean?
>>> > "Emacs Makes A Computer Slow". It's recursive, too!
>>> In a similar vein, how about "Eats Memory And Compromises Security"?
>>
>> I always heard it was ``Eventually Mallocs All Computer Storage''
>Nah, its "Escape Meta Alt Control Shift"
I heard of "Eight Megabytes And Continual Swapping"...
==============================================================================
Roman Stanowsky | SUN Microsystems GmbH | Phone: (+49) 89 46008-321
German Answer Center | Am Hochacker 3 | FAX: (+49) 89 46008-400
Datacomm | D-8011 Grasbrunn | ro...@sunmuc.UUCP
Pyramid 2000 was my very first adventure game. I remember being very
disappointed when I played ADVENT for the first time (on a *real*
system, a Micromation multiple-CPU MP/M machine with *5* Megs of
winchester!) and realized that Pyramid was but a shrunken-down
replica of ADVENT.
I was frustrated by Pyramid, so I did a pass with T-BUG. Commands
(like PLUGH) showed up, but the text messages were compressed to make
it fit into the massive 16K of RAM my TRS-80 had. Boy, those were
impressive machines....
>| David Barr | I did! I did! I did saw a puddy tat!! |
>| DSB...@psuvm.psu.edu | Where's the kaboom? There was supposed |
_______________________________________________________________________________
| | | | |\ | | /|\ | John K{llen "God hates me. *That's*
| |\ \|/ \| * |/ | |/| | | PoBox 11215 what it is." "Hate Him
| |\ /|\ |\ * |\ | | | | Stanford CA 94309 back; it works for me."
_|_|___|___|____|_\|___|__|__|_j...@csli.stanford.edu___________________________
Er.... hate to burst your bubble, but the Trash-80 came onto the
market some **YEARS** after the original, FORTRAN, Colossal-Cave
ADVENTURE game written by Will Crowther and Don Woods was making the
rounds of numerous types of mainframes and minis.
I first saw a listing in 1976.... and I'd been *hearing* about the
damn program for at *least* a year before that....... a quick look
at my copy of Levy's _Hackers_ gives the original year as 1974.
--
Robert Bickford {apple,pacbell,hplabs,ucbvax}!well!rab
r...@well.sf.ca.us /-------------------------------------\
| Don't Blame Me: I Voted Libertarian |
\-------------------------------------/
I seem to remember that there was a version of Star Trek for the TRS-80
that had to call the Klingons "Klings", because otherwise the program was
too big to fit in memory.
>_______________________________________________________________________________
> | | | | |\ | | /|\ | John K{llen "God hates me. *That's*
> | |\ \|/ \| * |/ | |/| | | PoBox 11215 what it is." "Hate Him
> | |\ /|\ |\ * |\ | | | | Stanford CA 94309 back; it works for me."
>_|_|___|___|____|_\|___|__|__|_j...@csli.stanford.edu___________________________
Ian Flanigan
fl...@ai.wustl.edu "You can never have too many napkins."
wucs1.wustl.edu!ai!flan@uucp
-------
Jack Meth
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
New York, NY 10019
BITNET JKMJJ@CUNYVM
"When all is said and done, more is said than done." A.E.N.
Ahem.
Ux1. ls -l /usr/local/bin/emacs /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 1706316 Jan 26 13:54 /usr/local/bin/emacs
-rwxr-xr-t 7 root 155648 Oct 18 15:56 /usr/ucb/vi
_____
Charley Kline, University of Illinois Computing Services
c-k...@uiuc.edu
You got MicroGnuEmacs there, son. No lisp, and not a lot else.
jessicar 1776% ll /usr/local/bin/emacs
-r-xr-xr-x 1 bin bin 1860685 Jan 22 12:46 emacs
kean
Oregon State University Kean Stump
College of Oceanography ke...@cs.orst.edu
Corvallis, Oregon {tektronix,hp-pcd}!orstcs!kean
The opinions in this article are MINE, not my employers. Don't Worry About Them.
% ls -l /usr/ucb/vi /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-x 6 root 196608 Apr 24 1989 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root 49152 Apr 24 1989 /bin/ed
--
Felix Lee fl...@shire.cs.psu.edu *!psuvax1!flee
It just keeps getting better and better, or worse and worse, depending
on how you look at it.
--woodstock
--
"What I like is when you're looking and thinking and looking
and thinking...and suddenly you wake up." - Hobbes
nh...@dvlseq.oracle.com or ...!uunet!oracle!nhess or (415) 598-3046
% ls -l /bin/cat /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5400 Apr 25 1989 /bin/cat
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root 40960 May 3 1989 /bin/ed
--
What do the following have in common: access(2), SysV echo, O_NONDELAY? |
Maarten Litmaath @ VU Amsterdam: ma...@cs.vu.nl, uunet!mcsun!botter!maart
>You got MicroGnuEmacs there, son. No lisp, and not a lot else.
No, I do not bloody have MicroGnuEmacs there, dad. I have MicroEmacs.
No Lisp. Whoopie. I don't often need to run eliza in my editor.
>jessicar 1776% ll /usr/local/bin/emacs
>-r-xr-xr-x 1 bin bin 1860685 Jan 22 12:46 emacs
The point that I was trying to make [which absolutely nobody seems
to have comprehended], is that you can't speak of the size of "emacs"
because there is no standard/reference "emacs". All too many people seem
to think that "emacs" means "gnu emacs", which (regardless of your preferences)
is wrong.
"emacs" can be applied to a wide spectrum of editors, including MicroEmacs,
Epsilon, Jove, Unipress Emacs, GnuEmacs, PDP-10 Emacs, etc.
If you insist on considering any one implementation the "real" one, then it
would have to be the ITS one.
1.8 meg unstripped -g'd gnu binaries certainly are not a "reference"
implementation.
But if everyone *were* using that incredibly tiny version you seem to
have, there wouldn't be any problems. Unfortunately, few people are.
Here at RPI:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 gnu 1171456 Nov 2 23:45 /usr/local/lib/emacs/bin/emacs
Kevin Martin
si...@pawl.rpi.edu
-rwx--x--x 1 root 545792 Aug 21 17:56 /usr/local/bin/emacs <- Real GNU
-rwxr-xr-t 6 bin 119808 Sep 11 1988 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 2 bin 20480 Jul 24 1988 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-x 1 bin 17408 Jul 24 1988 /bin/cat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 bin 7168 Jul 24 1988 /bin/echo
--
<-:(= Tony Stieber asti...@csd4.csd.uwm.edu att!uwm!uwmcsd4!astieber
"i make a point of never sleeping with anyone who believes in god." -- gypsy
/usr/local/bin/gnu/emacs not found <------------------------hooray!
-rwxr-xr-x 7 root 204800 Nov 7 10:12 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 3 root 49152 Nov 7 10:10 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 8688 Nov 7 09:17 /bin/cat
crw-rw-rw- 1 root 3, 2 Feb 1 07:48 /dev/null
*Now* can we close this thread?
thx
gak
Richard Stueven g...@sun.com
I like to know what I'm doing when I'm doing what I do when I'm
doing it because I don't know what to do when I'm not doing it. - S.Ridgeway
Are you sure that this file has been stripped of its symbol table? Our
GNU Emacs (version 18.5x, not sure what x is) measures only about 600K!
--
Just try taking your VAX down to Jiffy-Lube these days!
Byron Rakitzis. (tbra...@phoenix.Princeton.EDU)
Well, there's always
[2(rlk)||{!1120}<underprize.think.com>/tmp_mnt/am/u9/rlk/bin]
% ls -l /usr/bin/adb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 114688 May 25 1989 /usr/bin/adb
(emacs can't yet edit something the size of a decent filesystem).
(Hi there to you-know-who who's been waiting to see me actually post :-)
Now you see it...)
--
ames >>>>>>>>> | Robert Krawitz <r...@think.com> 245 First St.
bloom-beacon > |think!rlk (postmaster) Cambridge, MA 02142
harvard >>>>>> . Thinking Machines Corp. (617)876-1111
Well, that's not the whole story either:
[2(rlk)||{!1130}<underprize.think.com>/tmp_mnt/am/u9/rlk/bin]
% ps ux
USER PID %CPU %MEM SZ RSS TT STAT START TIME COMMAND
rlk 446 0.0 11.419976 1740 p0 S Jan 15111:55 gmacs -display underpriz
[note that that's 111 minutes of Sparc CPU time].
Emacs: it's not just an editor, it's a way of life.
Good Grief!
lovecraftRoot=>ls -l /bin/cat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5400 Apr 24 1989 /bin/cat*
If you know him; I have a question I have been fairly itching to ask;
I read a book called "The Longest Cave" which was all about the exploration of
the Mammoth Cave / Colossal Cave complex in TN. (There IS a place named "Y2",
there IS a "Bedquilt") In this book is a picture of a woman named Pat
Crowthers (I dont really remember the correct spelling, sorry if I got
it wrong.)
who is mapping the cave on an IBM 1130 with a pen plotter. My question is
if this woman is related to the adventure author of the same last name?
Thanks!
-Ben Burch
}
}> I believe that Will just made it up [much as he made up near everything else
}> in Adventure]. I can ask him, but I'm really quite sure that it was just
}> random-letters.
As a footnote, I did ask him and he did make it up. All the purported
etymologies are "folk"...
}I read a book called "The Longest Cave" which was all about the exploration of
}the Mammoth Cave / Colossal Cave complex in TN. (There IS a place named "Y2",
}there IS a "Bedquilt") In this book is a picture of a woman named Pat
}Crowthers (I dont really remember the correct spelling, sorry if I got
}it wrong.)
}who is mapping the cave on an IBM 1130 with a pen plotter. My question is
}if this woman is related to the adventure author of the same last name?
Just so. Patty was Will's wife at the time. She is still involved in
caving, I think, but Will has been out of it for years.
/Bernie\
>I read a book called "The Longest Cave" which was all about the exploration of
>the Mammoth Cave / Colossal Cave complex in TN. (There IS a place named "Y2",
>there IS a "Bedquilt") In this book is a picture of a woman named Pat
>Crowthers (I dont really remember the correct spelling, sorry if I got
>it wrong.)
The book:
The Longest Cave
by Roger W. Brucker & Richard A. Watson
ISBN 0-394-48793-1
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. NY
Is about the Mammoth Cave/Colossal Cave/[Flint Ridge system, and a host of
others] complex in Kentucky, rather than TN. The system is over 300 mi in
length and is the longest known cave system in the world, nothing else even
comes close. Pat Crowther was indeed on the party that linked Mammoth to
the Flint Ridge system, and numerous other trips. She is unrelated to
anyone, however, including her family.
hang gliding mailing list: hang-g...@virginia.edu
Galen Hekhuis UVa Health Sci Ctr (804)982-1646 g...@virginia.edu
A woman needs a fish like an umbrella needs a bicycle