[ih] cut and paste

[Jack Haverty]

Yep.   Good history here, by the guy who actually wrote the code. Larry 
Roberts is mentioned on the last page.

tenex.opost.com/anhc-31-4-anec.pdf

The story I heard, back in 1970, was that the Tech Model Railroad Club 
at MIT had gotten a PDP-1 to replace their old relay-based control 
system.   But it came with no software, so they had to write some to be 
able to do anything with the machine.  TECO was one of the results.

Jack

On 8/7/23 16:10, Vint Cerf wrote:
> didn't larry roberts write an email reader using TECO ?
>
> v
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 7, 2023 at 4:01 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>     AFAIK, vi was independent of TECO.  TECO started on the DEC PDP-1
>     in the
>     early 60s.  Unix and vi came along more than a decade later IIRC. 
>     But
>     it's certainly likely that the implementors of vi had used TECO
>     before
>     or were at least aware of it.  At its beginnings, TECO was often
>     used to
>     edit programs on paper tape (!) with a printing terminal.
>
>     TECO was ostensibly an editor, but in reality it was a programming
>     language and runtime environment.   I recall that somene actually
>     wrote
>     a timesharing system, in TECO macros, just as a hack.
>
>     FYI, here's the commands, circa 1976:
>     https://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/ai_600dpi/TECO_V508_Nov1976.pdf
>
>     Jack
>
>
>     On 8/7/23 15:47, Michael Thomas via Internet-history wrote:
>     >
>     > On 8/7/23 3:36 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>     >> TECO, circa 1970, had a notion of "QRegisters", which were
>     places you
>     >> could put some text and later insert it into your document
>     >> elsewhere.  TECO used single-letter commands, which you could
>     string
>     >> together to perform complex actions. See
>     >> http://tenex.opost.com/anhc-31-4-anec.pdf
>     >>
>     >> E.G., "hxa" would put the entire contents of your file into
>     QRegister
>     >> "a"; the "h" is shorthand for "0,z" which specifies everything
>     from
>     >> character0 through the last character (z).   The "x" is the actual
>     >> command top copy text into the specified QRegister. The command
>     "ga"
>     >> would "get" the contents of QRegister "a" and insert it into your
>     >> text at the current cursor location.
>     >>
>     >> So, "cut and paste" were in use in 1970 and probably earlier. I
>     don't
>     >> recall the terms "cut and paste" being used, and the TECO commands
>     >> were not ^C et al, but it's the same function. Emacs came later,
>     >> written as a set of TECO macros and commonly loaded into the "e"
>     >> QRegister - hence "E Macros".
>     >>
>     > I never used TECO but it was apparently a hacker's fun zone. My
>     > business partner wrote an ascii lunar lander in TECO.
>     >
>     > Do you know if vi had any roots in TECO?
>     >
>     > Mike
>     >
>     >
>
>     -- 
>     Internet-history mailing list
>     Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>     https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
>
>
> -- 
> Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
> Vint Cerf
> Google, LLC
> 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
> Reston, VA 20190
> +1 (571) 213 1346
>
>
> until further notice
>
>
>