 3-Feb-84 14:57:02-MST,411;000000000000
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Date:  3 Feb 1984 1348-PST
From: Ted Shapin <BEC.SHAPIN@USC-ECL.ARPA>
Subject: please add me
To: amethyst-users@MIT-MC.ARPA
Postal-address: Beckman Instruments, Inc.
Postal-address: 2500 Harbor X-11, Fullerton, CA 92634
Phone: (714)961-3393

pls add me to your list.
-------

13-Feb-84 08:49:49-MST,957;000000000000
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Date: Sunday, 12 February 1984 11:30:53 EST
From: James.Wendorf@cmu-cs-g
To: H19-People@mit-mc, Amethyst-Users@simtel20
Subject: Amethyst System Requirements
Message-ID: <1984.2.12.16.14.17.James.Wendorf@cmu-cs-g>

I am considering purchasing Mince and Scribble to run on my H89.  I have a
48K system with one internal 100K floppy and two external 200K floppies.
Will these programs run reasonably on such a configuration?  In particular,
how painful would it be to run Mince, i.e. is Mince very slow at swapping
and keeping the screen updated?  Would increasing the RAM to 64K help much?
Also, do you have any suggestions about the best place to purchase Mince and
Scribble?  What is the best price available, both separately and as a
package?  Finally, could I use C/80 to make modifications to the programs,
or is BDS C essential?
14-Feb-84 10:22:32-MST,837;000000000000
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Date:  Mon, 13 Feb 84 23:43 EST
From:  Hess@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject:  Re: Amethyst System Requirements
To:  James.Wendorf@CMU-CS-G.ARPA
cc:  amethyst-users@SIMTEL20.ARPA
In-Reply-To:  Message of 12 Feb 84 11:30 EST from "James.Wendorf at CMU-CS-G"
Message-ID:  <840214044350.410146@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA>

Scribble is hopeless on 48K systems.  Mince is OK.  Mince alwyas does
data swapping, so it'll be as slow as your floppies on files greater
than about 16K.  It used to run in 32K, but grew a little.  Since you're
at CMU, try asking the Comp[.Ctr.  people for high-bandwidth advice.
They have a large license to distribute the stuff, although they might
not support yourmachine internally.
14-Feb-84 16:17:19-MST,1941;000000000000
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Date:     Tue, 14 Feb 84 16:07:55 CST
From: Paul Milazzo <milazzo@rice>
Subject:  Re: Amethyst System Requirements
To: James.Wendorf@cmu-cs-g
Cc: Amethyst-Users@simtel20
Message-Id: <1984.02.14.16.07.56.430.06819@Rice-Janus.rice>
In-Reply-To: a message from James.Wendorf dated Sunday, 12 February 1984 11:30:53 EST

I currently use Mince and Scribble on my H89, with 64k RAM and two 640k
floppies (Tandon TM100-4).  I'm very happy with the arrangement,
although swapping is sometimes very annoying.  On your system, I would
strongly recommend expanding to 64k, or you'll find the system
unuseable.  If you are using your 100k floppy as your `A' disk, you may
also wish to patch Mince's default swap drive, since it looks for the
swap file first on the current disk, then on the `A' disk.  A 100k
floppy doesn't allow much of a swap file.

If you plan to bind things to function keys, you'll have to run a BIOS
with interrupt-driven console I/O (such as Heath 2.2.03 or later) and
configure Mince to do BIOS input, otherwise you'll lose some of the
characters.  I also recommend configuring for direct port output, since
it is markedly faster.

I can't help you much with price because it's been a long time since I
got my copy.  You will have to use BDS `C' for your modifications,
since only part of the distribution is in source form.  The remaining
modules are only distributed as BDS .CRL (relocatable object) files.
You must recompile to change key bindings, and since you're at CMU I
suspect you'll want to change Mince's "MIT-like" bindings to
"Gosling-like" bindings.

				Paul G. Milazzo <milazzo@rice>
				Dept. of Mathematical Sciences
				Rice University, Houston, TX
15-Feb-84 08:10:55-MST,1326;000000000000
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Date: 14 February 1984 21:56 EST
From: Paul L. Kelley <PLK @ MIT-MC>
Subject:  Amethyst System Requirements
To: James.Wendorf @ CMU-CS-G
cc: H19-PEOPLE @ MIT-MC, Amethyst-Users @ SIMTEL20
In-reply-to: Msg of 12 Feb 1984 11:30:53 EST from James.Wendorf at cmu-cs-g


	I use MINCE on the H89 and am very happy with the results. I
run my CPU and terminal at 4 MHz. Speeding up the CPU had the biggest
effect on speed by cutting the floppy I/O times considerably. I also
use extended density (1K sectors) to cut down the floppy I/O time
further.  Recently I added a hard disk, it's faster again by a factor
of 2. I started out with a 30 second load time for MINCE and am now
down to under two seconds.

	I have never run 48K, because when I got my H89 kit I
piggybacked the last 16K on one of the other banks. I used wirewrap
sockets with all leads soldered on the lower 4116s except for the chip
select line. You could probably just piggyback the chips directly,
4116s are so cheap now that you can experiment with little cost if you
make a mistake.

	Currently I am contemplating switching to 4164s and running
a ramdisk system. This should speed up the old H89 even further.

	regards,
		Paul

21-Feb-84 08:41:40-MST,1155;000000000000
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Date: 20 February 1984 22:05-EST
From: Jonathan David Callas <JURGEN @ MIT-MC>
Subject: "Dead Keys" in Scribble
To: AMETHYST-USERS @ MIT-MC
cc: JURGEN @ MIT-MC

I have been helping my mother-out-law, an ABD musicologist, prepare her
dissertation with Mince & Scribble. I have been successful in modifying
Mince for her requests, but I am having a problem with Scribble. This
is with the use of "Dead keys," which are like the keys on a European
typewriter. On these, it is a key that type a special character (like an
accent grave (`)), but doesn't advance the carriage. This way, by typing,
"`a" one gets an "a" with an accent grave. The question is, how to deliver
this via Scribble. I envision it as an in-line environment that allows 
overstriking. Sort of like typing "a@o(`)" to get the a-accent-grave.
Has anyone done anything like this? Any mechanism that allows overstriking
would probably suffice, or be enough of a help for me to modify Scribble.
Even an in-line environment of any sort would help.

	Thanks,
	Jon

22-Feb-84 10:29:11-MST,1384;000000000000
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Date:  Wed, 22 Feb 84 11:12 EST
From:  Hess@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject:  Re: "Dead Keys" in Scribble
To:  Jonathan David Callas <JURGEN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
cc:  amethyst-users@SIMTEL20.ARPA, bnh@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
In-Reply-To:  Message of 20 Feb 84 22:05 EST from "Jonathan David Callas"
Message-ID:  <840222161206.803024@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA>

The easiest way to get dead keys is to (1) use a letter-quality printer
(2) define a width table even if you are using a fixed-width print wheel
(3) make the dead key spacings be zero (4) make an @ @# command which
forces a white space (for use when you want the dead keys not to be
dead).

This is close to what you want, and requires little or no work (if you
don't want to make the @# command, just find an unused key and use
translation tables to turn that into a space on output).  You can do
this with no source code modification at all.

If you want a better solution and want to do the work, I suggest a NEW
code for the .FIN format file which tells the program to do overstrike
of two characters, then modifying the driver(s) to pay attention to it.
I don't have the manual here right now, so I don't remember if there is
enough source code provided to modify the .FIN format...

Brian
23-Feb-84 09:44:39-MST,381;000000000000
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Date: 23 February 1984 11:44-EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN @ MIT-MC>
Subject:  "Dead Keys" in Scribble
To: JURGEN @ MIT-MC
cc: AMETHYST-USERS @ MIT-MC
In-reply-to: Msg of 20 Feb 1984 22:05-EST from Jonathan David Callas <JURGEN>

if you get a response, pls share it.  tnx.

27-Feb-84 08:31:16-MST,2720;000000000000
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          26 Feb 84 11:55 GMT
From:        LUIS HPS (on ERCC DEC-10) <lejm%edxa@ucl-cs.arpa>
Date:        Sunday, 26-Feb-84 11:28:50-GMT
Message-ID:  <131274364730@EDXA>
To:          amethyst-users <amethyst-users%simtel20.arpa@ucl-cs.arpa>
Office-No:   + 44 (031) 667-1011 ext 6445/6468
Home-No:       + 44 (031) 665-2633 
Snail-Mail:  74 Newhailes Crescent, Musselburgh, Edinburgh EH21 6EG, Scotland
POM:         LQ+2D.15H.49M.29S.
Subject:     Amethyst - Request for Light

--------

Hello. I am not in this list, but I am seeking info on what
sort of software I  can get to run on a CP/M or CDOS/CROMIX
(Cromemco) machine, or MSDOS. 

You see, after a couple of years of VAXen and DEC-10 use, 
with (mostly) immensely pleasurable use of an EMACS-like (very)
extensible editor (TOP, written in POP-2) and SCRIBE, I am
dismayed at the thought of having to use something else. I can't
face the prospect of parting.  And yet ...  I will have to endure
a Burroughs B6900 and maybe even an IBM 43xx for the next year. So
I *must* buy a micro in order to survive the ordeal and be able to 
do some useful work. 

I am seeking eagerly anything which can, even remotely, resemble
the environment that I am using. Ideally I would have a 68000 with
4.1bsd and 4Meg and a hard disk and ... But in practice I will have
to use whatever I can afford. 

So, in a nutshell (finally):

	- How much EMACS-like, SCRIBE-like are MINCE/SCRIBBLE? 
	- What are they written in? 
	- Is source code available? 
	- Is the documentation excelent? Good? Acceptable? Ghastly? 
	- How much do they cost with/without source code? 
	- Is MINCE extensible/customizable? 
	- Are you satisfied with this products? How much do you use them? 
	- Do you switch between VAXen/DEC-10/DEC-20 EMACS/SCRIBE and
	  MINCE/SCRIBBLE a lot? Find it easy? Troublesome? 
	- What kind of support does the vendor give? 
	- Under what OS do they run? 
	- Can you write Environments/Fonts/DeviceDrivers for SCRIBBLE? 
	  Easily? 
	- Is this the best one can get when trying to preserve the
	  EMACS/SCRIBE environment on a micro? 
	- Finally, do they run under any of the UN*X-like OS floating
	  around? 


Thanks a lot for your patience and please reply to me directly as
I am not in the list. 


	Luis Jenkins
	Dept.  of AI
	Edinburgh Univ. 

	<lejm%edxa%ucl-cs@isid> or perhaps just
	<lejm%edxa@ucl-cs>

	
	

--------

27-Feb-84 09:28:18-MST,338;000000000000
Return-Path: <Cargo.PD@HI-MULTICS.ARPA>
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Date:  27 February 1984 10:15 cst
From:  Cargo.PD at HI-MULTICS
Subject:  Request for light
To:  amethyst-users at SIMTEL20

Anybody responding to Luis Jenkins please copy amethyst-users also.
Thank you.
