I was reminiscing with a former colleague about our first job back in 1983. We were trying to get around how we actually managed our work in those days.

From memory the first computer was an HP1000. Followed by an HP7000 (or was it HP3000). It looks like there is some documentation on line for the 1000 and I'll have a look, there is a mountain. With the HP1000 I think the monitor was connected directly to the computer and there was only one monitor allowed. The next one 7000/3000 had room at the back for multiple monitors. I can't remember whether the keyboard connected to the computer or the monitor. Files were stored on a variety of floppies although I think the later computer had a hard drive (wow, something like 16MB).

It is the editing process I can't remember. And this is where I am asking for any memories. Back in those days I recall line editors & screen editors? Obviously there was no mouse. I don't think there was a cut 'n' paste option (when we moved to VMS and VT100s that became a possibility).

Can anyone recall how we edited back then? One line at a time? Could we use the arrow keys to move around a 24*80 screen? Interested in any thoughts.

Cheers

We have such incredibly powerful editors now that it is hard to remember how primitive things were when we were moving from card decks to CRTs. My recollection of my own situation is that the editor displayed perhaps a screen full of data, but there was one line or so at the bottom to display the line we wanted to edit. We had only the right and left arrow keys and maybe an insert or overwrite option. You would choose the line to be edited by entering a line number from the displayed lines above. And then there was a key sequence to save or discard the changes.

Prior to that major advance (ha ha, in retrospect), when we could first put card images on a file, we used a batch editor that we controlled from an input card deck (running as a batch job on a card reader) with output on an impact printer. Our software was called LIBRARIAN. It provided for editing and storing data and source files in ASCII format. My work computer still contains text files from LIBRARIAN. These are about the only files that survive in readable from from my early computing days (40 years ago).

I didn't experience the time period you're referring to, but I do remember how editing was done prior to DOS 5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edlin

I remember norton commander and its editor (looks like it started 1986).
here was the official editor of DOS, but it was born in 1991. Previously you could use edlin, a line editor. You can find a similar (but a more powerful version of it) tool, named ed on linux.
Before IBM XT/AT I used Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, both had a quite good editor to write basic or assembly (Also I worked with EasyScript, a word processor for C64)

I seem to remember some editors for CP/M that ported well. The compilers seemed nice and fast to, but by GCC standards they CRAWLED. That was YEARS before we allowed rodents on our desks.
By 86 there were IBM-DOS and MS-DOS programs like WordStar (which also came in versions for CP/M-86 I believe) and compilers like Borland Turbo Pascal with that wordstar-like IDE. This whipped the TAIL of anything that came with DOS (edlin?), though that beat programming .com executables in debug! I remember the editor in the UCSD P-system compilers packages seemed fine as well, I knew those on Sun Sparkstations.

Man, is THAT a crawl down memory lane! We get to work with such GREAT TOYS now!! ;-)

I can remember edlin! Wikipeadia says that was the only one supplied until 1991, but I'm sure there was a full-page editor on my IBM 5150 back in the 80s. I didn't see a really powerful editor until I bought The Editor for my QL in 1987.

I worked on a HP1000 as well in 1982. The terminals might have been connected directly to the computer, but it was multi-user for certain. IIRC there was no need to login. You could sit behind a terminal and start working.

The editor was definitely a line editor. Once in the editor, after selecting a line, you could move to the place in the line where you wanted to edit, and all '////////////' would appear on the screen as a pointer where your cursor was.

I have programmed in Fortran IV and assembly. IIRC there was no stack pointer on the machine and passing function parameters was kinda strange mechanism which I don't recall.

The terminals seemed to have some intelligence. There were buttons marked "insert line" and "page up", but those were defunct. It made me think at the time that other (screen) editors were available, but not on this HP1000.

The screen editor I used at the time was on a IBM 370 VSPC. And that was quite something exciting. Before on the IBM I had been using a line editor which had striking resemblance with edlin. After I switched from punched cards to a 3270 terminal, that is.

I would be nice to see some more documentation about the old HP1000.

jlinkels

I'm just a whippersnapper.

I started mucking about with computers with DOS 3.2, so I never had to use edlin. I was pretty good with the old DOS editor, though.

In my BBSing days, I used Qedit to compose and reply to mail using the Bluewave mail program. Qedit was easily my favorite DOS editor; it was extremely powerful, with macro capability and many other features. It lives on as the Semware editor.

Hi jlinkels, I came across this site:

http://www.hp.com/products1/rte/index.html

The size of the boxes looks about right but not sure whether this is the right doco though. I note the first print date is 1986 which would make it a bit late. RTE rings a bell but I am not sure that is what we were using.

I agree though, none of this nonsense about "logging on". You just hopped in and away you go. In those days though all I wanted to do was edit, compile, link, run. The architecture was of no interest. it just worked.

Cheers

Of course vi. And I guess for me the best editors still allowed me to see "a buffer". I love emacs, do benefit by some of its features, but can absolutely live without them if I had too. I guess the bottom line is the less data available, i.e. if you only get to see what's left on the screen and once it's moved upwards due to new commands or lines having been typed and then you have to re-edit or recall information to see it again, then it's really up to your memory.

Programs were way simpler then. Problems tackled were also less complex, due to the limitations on our thinking and computing capabilities.

I think the biggest thing for me would be the capability to keep the whole file in a buffer so that I could page up and down and see the whole file. Next level would be to be able to visit another file. I think that helps a ton. Otherwise as I was thinking, limitations due to what one can see on the screen and memory really affects how much you can do.

It was RTE what I used.

In the documentation I do see some remnants of the past, but it is definitely a later version of what we used. The screen editor is described in the manual, and yes, the dedicated keys were used on the keyboard. But the line editor was also still present.

Nevertheless it is nice to see it all again once more. After --wow-- 33 years!.

Thanks for sharing

jlinkels

I too am a whippersnapper, sat down at a DOS 2.x PC for the first time in 1985. Had to learn edlin at first, but soon found Pmate, a cpm/dos full-screen editor with macro capabilities. Later i purchased Qedit which i still believe to be the best mouse-less text editor ever. Liked it so much that when i converted to Linux around 2005, i wrote my own Qedit-like editor for Linux, and still use it on occasion as my favorite terminal mode text editor.

Line editors, followed by full screen editors, then began wordprocessors.
First was ed, then vi, then for me, the best solution & still used today, mc, fantastic program.

If you're a whippersnapper, then what category does a high-school kid like myself fall under? The first computer I touched was my parents' Windows ME desktop. (Why does ME get all the hate? We never had any real problems, at least that I could remember.)

I started messing with Linux a few summers ago. I always used nano, but I've meen migrating to Vim recently. Tried emacs once, but by then I was too used to Vim's commands...

Hi...


Looks I'm ahead of you a bit.

The first computer system I remember working with was something like this guy in elementary school, back in 1981-82. Completely command line, nothing else. The "drive" was a cassette player connected to the back of the computer and sometimes it took a good 10-15 minutes to load a program.

Regards...