[kwlug-disc] MKS

Doug Moen doug at moens.org
Fri Jul 29 21:18:07 EDT 2022


Since we are reminiscing about the good old days,
one of the "text based realities" I experienced while working at MKS
was using the Qed text editor (written by David Tilbrook, Rob Pike and others at U of T).
Tilbrook was working there at the time.

This Qed had a family resemblance to the FRED text editor at University of Waterloo (FRED ran on the Honeywell in the Math department during the 1980's when I was there). In other words, it was a command line text editor, related to Unix `ed` but much more powerful, with multi-file editing and a built in programming language. It was pretty cool, and I could use some powerful tricks that aren't available to me in Vi AFAIK, but it wasn't open source and I lost access to it after I left MKS.

Doug.

On Fri, Jul 29, 2022, at 7:06 PM, Steve Izma wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 29, 2022 at 06:36:13PM -0400, Ron Singh wrote:
>> Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] MKS
>> 
>> Oh my gosh, Steve, I need to be whipped, Yes, MKS! Though I
>> could have sworn you were doing some work with WLU at the time?
>
> Yes, I was in two places at once[1]. In fact in late 1986 I held
> down three jobs, since I returned to Dumont Press Graphix (a
> typesetting co-op) to help wind it down (I had helped start it up
> in 1971 and worked there until 1984). I left MKS at the end of
> 1988 (although I still attended their parties) and continued with
> WLU Press for another 27 years.
>
>> Lord, I miss those simpler days of text-based realities and
>> 3/$1 hots dogs at that 7/11  next door to my old office:-)
>
> I can't say I miss cheap hot dogs, but I continue to experience
> the text-based reality of vi and ksh every day, without regret.
> Except maybe for the fact that fewer and fewer people can even
> imagine those experiences, making it difficult to explain.
>
> 	-- Steve
>
> Footnotes:
> [1] "How can you be in two places at once when you're really
> nowhere at all?", a song by Firesign Theatre.
>
> -- 
> Steve Izma
> -
> Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada  N2H 1W6
> E-mail: sizma at golden.net  phone: 519-745-1313
> cell (text only; not frequently checked): 519-998-2684
>
> ==
> The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and
> therefore never scrutinize or question.
>     -- Stephen Jay Gould, *Full House: The Spread of Excellence
>        from Plato to Darwin*, 1996
>
> _______________________________________________
> kwlug-disc mailing list
> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
> https://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org




More information about the kwlug-disc mailing list