Many things

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri Jan 28 19:27:26 2005

>
>
> "Randy McLaughlin" <randy_at_s100-manuals.com> wrote:
>
> > [...] PostScript is useless in this
> > case since the documents are stored as graphical images and cannot be used
> > on the classic computers.
>
> What????
>
> What makes you think that "classic computers" are character based?
> I don't want to start a "my machine supported graphics earlier than
> yours", but as a datapoint, I used a PERQ for my undergrad project in
> the early 80s. Since this was running Unix V7 (or smth close), I am

The PERQ 1 came out in 1979 IIRC....

THe Unix was almost certainly PNX (always pronounced 'Peenix', for
obvious reasons if you've ever used it :-)) It's the least useful PERQ OS
for me, because it doesn't really support user-written microcode (what's
the point of a PERQ if you don't modify the microcode).

> sure you can get a postscript viewer running on it (or a tiff viewer
> for that matter), while you'd have no chance in hell of getting

Maybe. You've got a maximum of 2M bytes of physical memory (and the video
memory is taken from that). OK, there is the PERQ 2T4 with 4M bytes, but
(a) AFAIK only 2 of those have survived (I would love to be proved wrong
on that) and (b) PNX was never ported to that machine. I've never come
across a PNX version that supported any form of virtual memory either. I
suspect getting a postscript viewer onto that would be 'interesting'

> Acrobat Reader for it.

Agreed!

>
> Which gives me a nice excuse to repeat my favorite line: I use open
> source software not because it is free, but because I get to keep the
> code (so I do not depend on the code author to port the software to
> newer/different/stranger platforms).

Yes. For me, having the source code is more important than it being free
(I don't use free software that comes as binaries-only, i do have the
source listing for the (IBM copyrighted) BIOS ROM in this PC).

-tony
Received on Fri Jan 28 2005 - 19:27:26 GMT