... I think collectively we need to update this
chart of the single best freeware for the stated PDF editing needs...
I prefer Free software to freeware, myself. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software>
With that taken care of to an appropriate level of clarification, what I
ask the team at large to help out for, is to flesh out this table.
Password protecting a .pdf file.
... I think collectively we need to update this
chart of the single best freeware for the stated PDF editing needs...
[x] Add or concatenate pages
[x] Merge PDFs
[x] Print sans username in the properties
[x] Remove pages
[x] Reorder pages
Just note that the PikePDF toolkit is very handy for performing all these tasks from a Python script. As an example use of it, I wrote this command- line tool <https://gitlab.com/ldo/acrid>, which lets you examine and change/add/delete the metadata associated with a PDF file -- both the old- style format and the XMP format.
A more readily available program to remove metadata might be LibreOffice. Also PDFgear online/offline tools <https://www.pdfgear.com/>
Also PDF24 online tools <https://tools.pdf24.org/en/remove-pdf-metadata>
Also Sejda online tools <https://www.sejda.com/edit-pdf-metadata>
This is getting long so let's break off a tangent for metadata removal. Suffice to say that removal of metadata is critically important, which
means it behooves us to find an easy way for everyone to be able to do it.
Let's just figure out how to use PDFGear, offline, for metadata removal.
Thanks for the suggestion of PikePDF, which I was wholly unaware of,
since the list was taken from discussions on the windows newsgroups over time.
Let's try this:{
<https://www.hekatron.de/fileadmin/user_upload/testfolder/Sample.pdf>
acrid showinfo Sample.pdf
acrid getxmp Sample.pdf<?xpacket begin="" id="W5M0MpCehiHzreSzNTczkc9d"?>
Here's another PDF toolkit: Poppler. This is a more extensive one, that covers both the creation and rendering of PDF files. For example, Inkscape relies on Poppler when you ask it to import pages from a PDF file into
your illustration.
Let's try this:
<https://www.hekatron.de/fileadmin/user_upload/testfolder/Sample.pdf>
acrid showinfo Sample.pdf
Perhaps another one I should mention is PDFMiner. This is a bit of a specialist one, focused on extracting text items from a PDF page, and
using various heuristics to try to reassemble them into larger text
blocks.
On Sun, 2 Mar 2025 22:03:12 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote :
Perhaps another one I should mention is PDFMiner. This is a bit of a
specialist one, focused on extracting text items from a PDF page, and
using various heuristics to try to reassemble them into larger text
blocks.
Thank you for adding value to the spirit of this conversation where the PDF experts and editing experts are involved, along with the Windows users.
Looking up what the PDFMiner Python tool can do for us, it's important to note it's apparently designed for extracting information from PDF files.
I'm not quite sure how PDFMinor differs from any of the other text
extractors (e.g., PDF to TEXT) but it seems to gather layout data also.
While it can extract metadata, it seems to me it's mostly used to "mine" large assemblages of PDF files for textual data of interest to the user.
The original PDFMiner has apparently been forked as pdfminer.six, which,
as far as I can tell from date stamps, is still actively being updated. <https://github.com/euske/pdfminer> <https://github.com/pdfminer/pdfminer.six>
Since it functions on windows, (within the python enviroment) and since it does something useful (mine text in PDFs), I'll add it to the PDF chart as [x] Extract text (poppler) or mine textual & metadata (pdfminersix)
Here's the current chart, where I simply ask for more things done to PDFs. [?] Print book format PDF (FinePrint payware)
[x] Add or concatenate pages (pdftk, acrobat payware)
[x] Add signature (Adobe Reader Fill-and-sign sign-yourself tool)
[x] Archive sites (wkhtmltopdf, Acrobat payware,fastone scroll capture)
[x] Compress PDFs (ImageMagick, PDFgear, rlvision)
[x] Convert PDF to MSOffice (PDFgear, Calibre for MS Word only)
[x] Convert PDF to MSWord (Calibre, PDFgear)
[x] Convert PDF to epub format (Calibre)
[x] Convert PDF to PostScript (Calibre, Poppler)
[x] Converts PDFs to HTML (poppler)
[x] Converts PDFs to PNG, JPEG, etc (poppler) using Cairo graphics
[x] Converts PDFs to PPM/PGM/PBM image formats (poppler)
[x] Create PDF new text (Irfanview or Paint.NET plugins + Ghostscript)
[x] Edit PDF existing text (Adobe Reader commenting, Acrobat payware)
[x] Embeds files into a PDF as attachments (poppler)
[x] Extract images (PDF Exchange Viewer, PDF Shaper, PDFgear, poppler)
[x] Extract text (poppler) or mine textual & metadata (pdfminersix)
[x] Extracts embedded files (attachments) from a PDF (poppler)
[x] Fastest PDF readers (Sumatra or Foxit)
[x] Globally search & replace PDF text (Libre Office)
[x] List fonts used in a PDF (poppler)
[x] Merge PDFs (pdfsam, pdftk, PDFgear, Poppler)
[x] Metadata display on command line (poppler)
[x] Metadata removal (LibreOffice Writer, PDFgear offline)
[x] OCR, PDF-Xchange, freeOCR (paperfile.net), GOCR (jocr.sourceforge.net) [x] Offline encrypt PDF with a password (pdfencrypt)
[x] Online shrink PDF <adobe.com/acrobat/online/compress-pdf.html>
[x] PDF text to audio file (Balabolka)
[x] Remove pages (pdfsam, pdftk)
[x] Remove restrictions (Ghostscript,Ghostview,ps2edit,pdfwrite,pdf2djvu)
[x] Renumber pages (Acrobat Reader)
[x] Reorder pages (mutool)
[x] Rotate pages (Acrobat Reader)
[x] Separates a PDF into individual pages (poppler)
[x] Split PDFs (PDFgear, Poppler)
[x] Tile PDFs (i.e., to print large posters) (Posterazor)
[?] What other tasks do you do to edit or modify a PDF file?
I suppose all are available for Windows, it would be useful to know which are also for Linux or Mac.
My history is that I cut my teeth on IBM assembly, cobol, fortran 77, etc., so I grew up on PDP11, DEC/VMS, SunOS, Solaris, etc., well before my first real Linux (Redhat) & then Centos & Ubuntu, so I agree Linux is important.
On Sat, 1 Mar 2025 20:23:08 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote :
Let's try this:
<https://www.hekatron.de/fileadmin/user_upload/testfolder/Sample.pdf>
acrid showinfo Sample.pdf
Definitely works nicely. I've added the suggestions that I think made sense as a general use chart for Windows users, whose current version is below.
The one tool missing seems to be LaTeX, for creating PDFs, but perhaps "create" in this context means "convert from some other typeset format" rather than "typeset directly to PDF" (in industry terms, "originate")
Different from both Inkscape (vector) & ImageMagick (raster) is
Ghostscript, which can rasterize PDFs ...
The one tool missing seems to be LaTeX, for creating PDFs, but perhaps
"create" in this context means "convert from some other typeset format"
rather than "typeset directly to PDF" (in industry terms, "originate")
Along those lines, is it also worth mentioning that the Cairo graphics library includes the option for rendering drawing to PDF, among its range
of output surface types?
<https://www.cairographics.org/manual/cairo-PDF-Surfaces.html>
Thank you, this is a hugely useful list.'
The one tool missing seems to be LaTeX, for creating PDFs, but perhaps "create" in this context means "convert from some other typeset format" rather than "typeset directly to PDF" (in industry terms, "originate")
I wrote my first program on punch card... for a IBM (maybe a 340?) and the lab
had half the punchers(?) from honeywell, which, of course had different character set, Fun!.
At some point in time I swore off programming languages after concluding
that they all do teh same damn thing, only with different syntax. :)
It has been a few years... I think collectively we need to
update this chart of the single best freeware for the
stated PDF editing needs...
[?] Print book format PDF (FinePrint payware)
[x] Convert PDF to MSWord or any epub format & vice versa (Calibre)
[x] Edit PDF existing text (Adobe Reader commenting, Acrobat payware)
[x] Globally search & replace PDF text (Libre Office)
[x] Extract images (PDF Exchange Viewer, PDF Shaper)
[x] Reorder pages (mutool)
[x] Rotate pages (Acrobat Reader)
What are your suggestions (so that everyone benefits from
your knowledge)?
On 3 Mar 2025 19:08:42 GMT, G wrote :
I wrote my first program on punch card... for a IBM (maybe a 340?) and the lab
had half the punchers(?) from honeywell, which, of course had different
character set, Fun!.
Yeah. You reminded me of the computer rooms with the raised floors (for the >A/C) and the big magtapes (I still have one somewhere). When I wrote my
first program in school, it was in punched cards and Fortran 77 on an IBM, >oh, maybe an 1130?
I remember the punched tape machine sat there, unused, while we employed
the "more modern" boxes of punched cards. Do I remember correctly that a
box was about two thousand lines of Fortran code? Most of my code was about
a quarter to, at most, a half a box, so that's probably 500 to 1000 lines, >excluding the obligatory IBM JCL.
Given LaTeX is the de facto standard for creating mathematical and
scientific documents, I agree with you that it belongs as a line item.
[x] Generate complex PDF using markup language (LaTeX via pdfTeX or LuaTeX)
A box of Hollerith (or IBM) cards held 2,000 cards. Each FORTRAN
statement would go on a separate card, so 2,000 FORTRAN statements
is right. And if you dropped your box and spilled your cards, good
luck getting them back in the correct order!
On Mon, 3 Mar 2025 21:38:56 +0000, Peter Flynn wrote :[snip]
Given LaTeX is the de facto standard for creating mathematical and[...]> Contrasting with those programming libraries (which require
scientific documents, I agree with you that it belongs as a line item.
code), LaTeX is a markup language and typesetting system. We write the document's content and structure using LaTeX commands, and LaTeX handles
the visual formatting to PDF.
So I won't include the programming libraries in that new line, for now.
Does that clarify the two lines better for 'creating' & 'generating' PDF?
[x] Add text to existing pdf (Irfanview or Paint.NET plugins + Ghostscript) [x] Generate complex PDF using markup language (LaTeX via pdfTeX or LuaTeX)
PDF is meant to be a final format not meant for editing.
Keep it so.
Can someone with Python installed test it out on a sample PDF for us?
There are two routes to PDF if you have XML documents (increasingly
common; and both Word and Libre Office are XML inside). Both use
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) but in different ways
On 04/03/2025 16:13, Anton Shepelev wrote:
PDF is meant to be a final format not meant for editing.
Keep it so.
Nevertheless, I have several times been able to make on-the-fly changes
and even introduce additional material like running headers or
paper-type change statements with
pdf2ps file.pdf | sed -e "<stuff>" | ps2pdf newfile.pdf
[?] Print book format PDF (FinePrint payware)
I believe LaTeX has packages for that. I have produced PDF
booklets from Postscrpt, with psbook and psnup. The
incoming PostScipt was mine, from either LaTeX or GNU Troff.
[x] Convert PDF to MSWord or any epub format & vice versa (Calibre)
[x] Edit PDF existing text (Adobe Reader commenting, Acrobat payware)
[x] Globally search & replace PDF text (Libre Office)
PDF is meant to be a final format not meant for editing.
Keep it so.
[x] Extract images (PDF Exchange Viewer, PDF Shaper)
SumatraPDF
[x] Reorder pages (mutool)
[x] Rotate pages (Acrobat Reader)
pdftk of course.
What are your suggestions (so that everyone benefits from
your knowledge)?
The obvious one -- typsetting software for producing PDFs
from text, e.g.: LaTeX, (GNU) Troff.
On 04/03/2025 15:23, Tim Slattery wrote:
[snip]
A box of Hollerith (or IBM) cards held 2,000 cards. Each FORTRAN
statement would go on a separate card, so 2,000 FORTRAN statements
is right. And if you dropped your box and spilled your cards, good
luck getting them back in the correct order!
In my college, the computing centre had a card sorter, which was huge
and stood on cast-iron lion's feet which someone had painted gold :-)
But of course it only worked if your program statements or data lines
(cards) were numbered. You only drop a box of cards once.
(You may hear the voice of experience there :-)
Peter
Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie> writes:
On 04/03/2025 15:23, Tim Slattery wrote:I worked for Honeywell at a WWMMCCS site (World-Wide Military Command
[snip]
A box of Hollerith (or IBM) cards held 2,000 cards. Each FORTRAN
statement would go on a separate card, so 2,000 FORTRAN statements
is right. And if you dropped your box and spilled your cards, good
luck getting them back in the correct order!
In my college, the computing centre had a card sorter, which was huge
and stood on cast-iron lion's feet which someone had painted gold :-)
But of course it only worked if your program statements or data lines
(cards) were numbered. You only drop a box of cards once.
(You may hear the voice of experience there :-)
Peter
and Control System) at the Washington Navy Yard as a tech support
guy. This was about 1973. I created new boot decks for the Honeywell 635
as needed, with new patch cards or new configurations. I was carrying a
tray of punched cards to the computer room, one hand on each end of the
card tray. I tried to hook the door handle with my little finger to pull
it open and lost my grip on the tray; cards all over the floor!
Embarrasing to say the least, and I didn't even try to put them back in order, just punched out a new deck.
I believe LaTeX has packages for that. I have produced
PDF booklets from Postscrpt, with psbook and psnup. The
incoming PostScipt was mine, from either LaTeX or GNU
Troff.
Thanks for that suggestion as, in the past, I printed
booklets.
Printing a booklet requires arranging both sides of the
pages in a specific order so that when the 8.5x11-inch
printed sheets are folded in half, the pages appear in the
correct sequence as if they were in a booklet.. [...]
However, back to the printing of booklets, that's one
thing I had trouble finding free (as in no cost) software
as printing a booklet from folded 8.5x11-inch paper is
more complex than standard printing, especially when
dealing with double-sided printing and odd numbers of
pages & title pages.
As noted, LaTeX has sophisticated built-in features to
analyze the content of the PDF to more intelligently
handle page breaks to avoid splitting images or creating
an awkward text flow.
Since the expensive cost of free (no cost) software is in
the trials and tribulations to find the best ones that
work,
does anyone have experience with any of the distributions
above for creating the booklet style PDFs?
On Tue, 3/4/2025 11:28 PM, Don_from_AZ wrote:
Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie> writes:
On 04/03/2025 15:23, Tim Slattery wrote: [snip]I worked for Honeywell at a WWMMCCS site (World-Wide Military
A box of Hollerith (or IBM) cards held 2,000 cards. Each
FORTRAN statement would go on a separate card, so 2,000 FORTRAN
statements is right. And if you dropped your box and spilled
your cards, good luck getting them back in the correct order!
In my college, the computing centre had a card sorter, which was
huge and stood on cast-iron lion's feet which someone had painted
gold :-) But of course it only worked if your program statements
or data lines (cards) were numbered. You only drop a box of cards
once.
(You may hear the voice of experience there :-)
Peter
Command and Control System) at the Washington Navy Yard as a tech
support guy. This was about 1973. I created new boot decks for the
Honeywell 635 as needed, with new patch cards or new
configurations. I was carrying a tray of punched cards to the
computer room, one hand on each end of the card tray. I tried to
hook the door handle with my little finger to pull it open and lost
my grip on the tray; cards all over the floor! Embarrasing to say
the least, and I didn't even try to put them back in order, just
punched out a new deck.
You could put numbers in column 72.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/FortranCardPROJ039.agr.jpg/960px-FortranCardPROJ039.agr.jpg
You generally also need some spacing between card numbers, like use
10,20,30 then if you added a card it could be 25, then a card between
20 and 25, could be card 23. You needed a means to support program
edits.
On Tue, 3/4/2025 11:28 PM, Don_from_AZ wrote:
Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie> writes:
On 04/03/2025 15:23, Tim Slattery wrote:I worked for Honeywell at a WWMMCCS site (World-Wide Military Command
[snip]
A box of Hollerith (or IBM) cards held 2,000 cards. Each FORTRAN
statement would go on a separate card, so 2,000 FORTRAN statements
is right. And if you dropped your box and spilled your cards, good
luck getting them back in the correct order!
In my college, the computing centre had a card sorter, which was huge
and stood on cast-iron lion's feet which someone had painted gold :-)
But of course it only worked if your program statements or data lines
(cards) were numbered. You only drop a box of cards once.
(You may hear the voice of experience there :-)
Peter
and Control System) at the Washington Navy Yard as a tech support
guy. This was about 1973. I created new boot decks for the Honeywell 635
as needed, with new patch cards or new configurations. I was carrying a
tray of punched cards to the computer room, one hand on each end of the
card tray. I tried to hook the door handle with my little finger to pull
it open and lost my grip on the tray; cards all over the floor!
Embarrasing to say the least, and I didn't even try to put them back in
order, just punched out a new deck.
You could put numbers in column 72.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/FortranCardPROJ039.agr.jpg/960px-FortranCardPROJ039.agr.jpg
I can not read punched cards.it.
The lab at uni used them just the year before me. I never had to use cards or punched paper tape.
:-D
The trouble was, there were not enough terminals for all the students. I tried going somewhere where you could rent a computer by the hour. Finally I decided I needed a computer of my own, a PC clone. I was fortunate to have a family that could afford
I can not read punched cards.
The lab at uni used them just the year before me. I never had to use
cards or punched paper tape.
:-D
I can not read punched cards.
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
[...]
I can not read punched cards.
The lab at uni used them just the year before me. I never had to use
cards or punched paper tape.
:-D
I had colleagues who could - visually - read ASCII paper tapes. And
another one could visually read 9-track magtape, when the magnetzation
was made visible by some kind of fluid.
[...]
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
[...]
I can not read punched cards.
The lab at uni used them just the year before me. I never had to use
cards or punched paper tape.
:-D
I had colleagues who could - visually - read ASCII paper tapes. And another one could visually read 9-track magtape, when the magnetzation
was made visible by some kind of fluid.
[...]
On Wed, 3/5/2025 7:26 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I can not read punched cards.
This is a card from a Model 29. It has inked characters along the top,
so you could read the ASCII character equivalent of the 12 row Hollerith punch.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/029-card.jpg
Not all card schemes, were that friendly.
You could compare the inked characters on the card, to your 132 column line printer output.
Paul
Marion:
I believe LaTeX has packages for that. I have produced
PDF booklets from Postscrpt, with psbook and psnup. The
incoming PostScipt was mine, from either LaTeX or GNU
Troff.
Thanks for that suggestion as, in the past, I printed
booklets.
Printing a booklet requires arranging both sides of the
pages in a specific order so that when the 8.5x11-inch
printed sheets are folded in half, the pages appear in the
correct sequence as if they were in a booklet.. [...]
However, back to the printing of booklets, that's one
thing I had trouble finding free (as in no cost) software
as printing a booklet from folded 8.5x11-inch paper is
more complex than standard printing, especially when
dealing with double-sided printing and odd numbers of
pages & title pages.
That's exactly what I did with psbook and psnup from
psutils. I produced an A4 booklet from an A5 document with
sequential pages. I printed my booklent by with a normal
single-sided printer, in two runs, without reordering the
sheaf in between. All the rearrangement was taken care of
during the generation of the PDF.
Before *roff and *tex, I used to print such booklets in
whatever software I had at hand, including MS Word '97 and
Adobe PageMaker. For Word, I had a simple Pascal program
that would generate two comma-spearated lists of page
numbers, ready to paste in into the Print window, for
printing the even and odd pages of the booklet.
The alrorithm is rather simple, IIRC. After you append
empty pages to make the total a multiple of four, the
following invariant holds true for each side of any quatro:
page_left + page_right = page_total + 1
For example, a twelve-page booklet will be printed on three
(12/4) sheets thusly:
even odd
12 1 verso 2 11
10 3 verso 4 9
8 5 verso 6 7
So, you first print the odd pages in increasing order, and
then odd ones in decreasing order, to end up with a set of
sheats ready to fold (IIRC). I still seem to have the ugly
ancient program in Pascal that I wrote in late school or
early University to perfrom that task:
https://paste.sr.ht/~shepton/4d8374ec6e2c543fa8caad43709596b1cae5cd94
It should compile in FreePascal compiler.
As noted, LaTeX has sophisticated built-in features to
analyze the content of the PDF to more intelligently
handle page breaks to avoid splitting images or creating
an awkward text flow.
No, LaTeX and Troff are tools to author and typeset new
documents, rather than modify existing PDFs.
Since the expensive cost of free (no cost) software is in
the trials and tribulations to find the best ones that
work,
Which is why I prefer to use time-honoured classics.
does anyone have experience with any of the distributions
above for creating the booklet style PDFs?
I have used this one a long time ago:
https://ctan.org/pkg/booklet
And I have used psutils (with psbook and psnup) no so long
time ago:
https://github.com/rrthomas/psutils
Generally, I have found *roff much easier than LaTeX. I
have written several Groff macros myself, including those to
wrap text around images as shown in this newsletter:
https://corewar.co.uk/coreops/coreops02.txt
Both Groff and LaTeX have great and helpful communities.
On Tue, 4 Mar 2025 22:32:26 +0000, Peter Flynn wrote:
There are two routes to PDF if you have XML documents (increasingly
common; and both Word and Libre Office are XML inside). Both use
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) but in different ways
Does anybody still use SGML? Remember, that gave birth to HTML.
[?] Print book format PDF (FinePrint payware)
I believe LaTeX has packages for that. I have produced PDF
booklets from Postscrpt, with psbook and psnup. The
incoming PostScipt was mine, from either LaTeX or GNU Troff.
[x] Convert PDF to MSWord or any epub format & vice versa (Calibre)
[x] Edit PDF existing text (Adobe Reader commenting, Acrobat payware)
[x] Globally search & replace PDF text (Libre Office)
PDF is meant to be a final format not meant for editing.
Keep it so.
[x] Extract images (PDF Exchange Viewer, PDF Shaper)
SumatraPDF
[x] Reorder pages (mutool)
[x] Rotate pages (Acrobat Reader)
pdftk of course.
What are your suggestions (so that everyone benefits from
your knowledge)?
The obvious one -- typsetting software for producing PDFs
from text, e.g.: LaTeX, (GNU) Troff.
When you use paper tape regularly, you learn how to recognize
end of record marks. When a tape load reports a read error,
you can roll back a record and retry, which takes less time
than loading the paper tape all over again. Learning to do that,
is a "survival mechanism" :-)
[?] Print book format PDF (FinePrint payware)
I believe LaTeX has packages for that. I have produced PDF
booklets from Postscrpt, with psbook and psnup. The
incoming PostScipt was mine, from either LaTeX or GNU Troff.
[x] Convert PDF to MSWord or any epub format & vice versa (Calibre)
[x] Edit PDF existing text (Adobe Reader commenting, Acrobat payware)
[x] Globally search & replace PDF text (Libre Office)
PDF is meant to be a final format not meant for editing.
Keep it so.
[x] Extract images (PDF Exchange Viewer, PDF Shaper)
SumatraPDF
[x] Reorder pages (mutool)
[x] Rotate pages (Acrobat Reader)
pdftk of course.
What are your suggestions (so that everyone benefits from
your knowledge)?
The obvious one -- typsetting software for producing PDFs
from text, e.g.: LaTeX, (GNU) Troff.
Printing a booklet requires arranging both sides of the pages in a
specific order so that when the 8.5x11-inch printed sheets are
folded in half, the pages appear in the correct sequence as if they
were in a booklet.
However, back to the printing of booklets, that's one thing I had trouble finding free (as in no cost) software as printing a booklet from folded 8.5x11-inch paper is more complex than standard printing, especially when dealing with double-sided printing and odd numbers of pages & title pages.
I'm aware of "pdfbook", but, alas, that requires Python (aurgh!, again!)
on Windows, but luckily, pdfbook should be easier to use on Linux & Mac.
Digging a bit into LaTeX (which I've never used myself), MiKTeX & TeX Live seem to be free (no cost) Windows, Linux & Mac "modern" TeX distributions.
Also TeXstudio or TeXworks appear to be free (no cost) LaTeX editors.
Since the expensive cost of free (no cost) software is in the trials and tribulations to find the best ones that work, does anyone have experience with any of the distributions above for creating booklet style PDFs?
That was the reason stated when I started BASIC Programming (1985'ish
.... O./K., so I was a late comer!!) "Number the Lines 10, 20, 30, etc,
so, if you need to add a bit extra, there were all those other line
numbers to use!!"
On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 14:59:06 -0500, Paul wrote :
When you use paper tape regularly, you learn how to recognize
end of record marks. When a tape load reports a read error,
you can roll back a record and retry, which takes less time
than loading the paper tape all over again. Learning to do that,
is a "survival mechanism" :-)
Speaking of such survival mechanisms, when I was burning EPROMs for the Motorola 68701 (probably mid 80's time frame) that I wire wrapped myself, I would write down the Assembly Language instructions, at first, on my own.
Then, after a while, it was a "survival mechanism" to just use the hex instead, as what's the difference between "load accumulator A" (LDAA) and
the hex (86) or for extended addressing, (B6) for the same command.
It's not that big of a stretch to remember 86 versus LDAA, and it helps a
lot when it came to burning the EEPROMs (which the 68701 had internally).
Those days are over and gone, never to return.
I won't need that EEPROM burner any more than a dwellmeter & timing light.
On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 20:48:45 +1100, Daniel70 wrote:
That was the reason stated when I started BASIC Programming
(1985'ish .... O./K., so I was a late comer!!) "Number the Lines
10, 20, 30, etc, so, if you need to add a bit extra, there were all
those other line numbers to use!!"
Some of us went by hundreds.
BASIC was designed as an integral part of an interactive timeshared
system for students and staff to use at Dartmouth. Line numbers
served two purposes: one as target labels for GOTOs, the other for
ordering lines in the editor.
Both uses are now obsolete.
By the way, did you have some kind of line-renumbering utility in
your BASIC system? That would also fix up GOTOs to correctly branch
to the renumbered lines.
On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 20:48:45 +1100, Daniel70 wrote:
That was the reason stated when I started BASIC Programming (1985'ish
.... O./K., so I was a late comer!!) "Number the Lines 10, 20, 30, etc,
so, if you need to add a bit extra, there were all those other line
numbers to use!!"
Some of us went by hundreds.
BASIC was designed as an integral part of an interactive timeshared system for students and staff to use at Dartmouth. Line numbers served two
purposes: one as target labels for GOTOs, the other for ordering lines in
the editor.
Both uses are now obsolete.
By the way, did you have some kind of line-renumbering utility in your
BASIC system? That would also fix up GOTOs to correctly branch to the renumbered lines.
On Wed, 3/5/2025 9:39 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
[...]
I can not read punched cards.
The lab at uni used them just the year before me. I never had to use
cards or punched paper tape.
:-D
I had colleagues who could - visually - read ASCII paper tapes. And another one could visually read 9-track magtape, when the magnetzation
was made visible by some kind of fluid.
[...]
When you use paper tape regularly, you learn how to recognize
end of record marks. When a tape load reports a read error,
you can roll back a record and retry, which takes less time
than loading the paper tape all over again. Learning to do that,
is a "survival mechanism" :-)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 20:48:45 +1100, Daniel70 wrote:
By the way, did you have some kind of line-renumbering utility in your
BASIC system? That would also fix up GOTOs to correctly branch to the
renumbered lines.
Wasn't 'renumber' (or 'ren'?) just a command? Or is my memory playing tricks with me?
This is called "imposition". Printing a book means arranging the pages >(usually) 16 (possibly 32) per side of a very large sheet (and therefore
16 the other side) making a "signature", laid out so that when folded
and folded and folded etc and trimmed, page 1 has page 2 on the back of
it; then repeat for the next 32 (or 64) pages, and repeat, etc until all
X00 pages are accounted for. Printed off a reel of paper (confusingly
called a web) nowadays, and slit to sheets before folding. Then stacked >together, the spines abraded and glued (or sewn with thread for fancy
books), then draw on the cover (printed separately on board), glue it,
and give it a final trim.
Hmm!! Probably O.T. but the 'Dartmouth' you mention .... was that
Dartmouth, Victoria, Australia or was that somewhere in U.K.?? Or
elsewhere??
In article <m2s253FjseU2@mid.individual.net>, peter@silmaril.ie says...
This is called "imposition". Printing a book means arranging the pages
(usually) 16 (possibly 32) per side of a very large sheet (and therefore
16 the other side) making a "signature", laid out so that when folded
and folded and folded etc and trimmed, page 1 has page 2 on the back of
it; then repeat for the next 32 (or 64) pages, and repeat, etc until all
X00 pages are accounted for. Printed off a reel of paper (confusingly
called a web) nowadays, and slit to sheets before folding. Then stacked
together, the spines abraded and glued (or sewn with thread for fancy
books), then draw on the cover (printed separately on board), glue it,
and give it a final trim.
I don't know what the international availability of this is, but this is
a BBC program detailing how hardback books are manufactured, with a good discussion of "imposition".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0027f48/inside-the-factory- series-9-5-hardback-books
(rejoin link with no whitespace)
I don't know what the international availability of this is, but this is
a BBC program detailing how hardback books are manufactured, with a good discussion of "imposition".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0027f48/inside-the-factory-series-9-5-hardback-books
By the way, did you have some kind of line-renumbering utility in your
BASIC system? That would also fix up GOTOs to correctly branch to the renumbered lines.
On 06/03/2025 02:18, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
By the way, did you have some kind of line-renumbering utility in your
BASIC system? That would also fix up GOTOs to correctly branch to the
renumbered lines.
AFAIR both HP BASIC and DEC-10 BASIC had line-renumbering (into 10s)
that updated GOTO statements. I believe the DEC-10 BASIC was a direct descendant of Dartmouth BASIC, so presumably someone in DEC spotted the
need and added the feature.
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