[ih] Larry Roberts & RD the first electronic mail manager software [was written in TECO on TENEX] (fwd)

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

fond memories of the Bravo on the Xerox Alto when one typed the:

"... EDIT command
Early versions of Bravo had a command interface designed such that a user
attempting to enter the command "EDIT" in command-mode would instead
irreversibly replace all text with a "T". The "e" was interpreted to select
everything. The "d" would delete everything selected. The "i" would switch
back to input-mode with the "t" appearing as the only text. Only one action
could be undone, so only the insertion of the t could be reversed.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravo_(editor)

On Wed, Aug 9, 2023 at 3:04 PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> On 10-Aug-23 06:16, Don Hopkins via Internet-history wrote:
> > How is it even possible to tell if a TECO file is scrambled or not??!
>
> OK, now I have to tell my only TECO story. Understand that I have never
> used TECO, although I did know DEC-10 fanatics at CERN who were very
> keen on it. In about 1980 my team at CERN had a Russian visitor for
> a year (whose name I cannot recall, and he hardly spoke any English).
> He was allegedly a wizard programmer, so we asked him to create a
> syntax-driven editor for the high level language we were using
> for accelerator control. One day he announced that it was ready
> and offered a demonstration. At this point it became clear that the
> only editor he knew was TECO, and his editor was (a) full of modes
> and (b) the commands were single letters. He asked me to have
> a go. As I always did in those days to test the robustness of
> interactive code, I typed in a random string. Just before I hit
> "Enter" he grabbed my hand, shouting "No! No!". There was "EK" in
> my random string - apparently it would have destroyed everything.
>
> We never used his code.
>
> Sorry for the interruption.
>
>     Brian
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>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True