To: crackmonkey@crackmonkey.org
From: Monkey Master <monkeymaster@crackmonkey.org>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 18:33:20 -0700
Subject: Re: [CrackMonkey] [mailman-owner@zork.net: CrackMonkey subscription notification]
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begin Ian MacLure quotation:
> 	Perl? Perl???? Hey he's a Python afficionado. Perl is
> 	officially lame.

	Right, but legacy code is legacy code.  The original version
was in PostScript, because the printer in the office was a 68020 with
8MB RAM, while all the computers were Mac Plus 68000s with 1MB.

	The Python-fu thing just sort of accreted, but no one has had
the time to re-write it.

-- 
"The only thing is certain: Russian petty computer hooligans are very
slovenly, while FBI agents are very persistent in hunting them." --Pravda
	01234567 <- The amazing* indent-o-meter! 
        ^	    (*: Indent-o-meter may not actually amaze.)

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To: Ian MacLure <ibm@svpal.org>
From: "Peter A. Peterson II" <pedro@tastytronic.net>
Cc: "Peter A. Peterson II" <pedro@tastytronic.net>,
    crackmonkey@crackmonkey.org
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 20:35:16 -0500
Subject: Re: [CrackMonkey] [mailman-owner@zork.net: CrackMonkey subscription notification]
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Message-Id: <20010817203516.A3189@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Ian MacLure:
> 	Hmmm, well then he managed to find himself a very good 
> 	Dire Red simulant and a damn lifelike Don Marti sock 
> 	puppet.

Ian: It's like those Star Trackkies. They DRESS UP LIKE THEM. Doy!

> 	Perl? Perl???? Hey he's a Python afficionado. Perl is
> 	officially lame.

It's not MY fault he was written in Perl. Besides, Perl was THE
SHITZ0R when Rick Moen 1.0 was first written and released on the
wisc.edu gopher site. Heck, he was WRITTEN by Roger Avery while he was
logged in to that machine using the TELNET protocol as defined in the
D.O.D. RFC 854.

pedro

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To: crackmonkey@crackmonkey.org
From: Don Marti <dmarti@zgp.org>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 18:59:37 -0700
Subject: Re: [CrackMonkey] [mailman-owner@zork.net: CrackMonkey subscription notification]
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begin Ian MacLure quotation of Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 06:23:41PM -0700:

> 	Perl? Perl???? Hey he's a Python afficionado. Perl is
> 	officially lame.

Rick Moen, as we should all know by now, was originally written in
_PostScript_ in the 1980s, since the fastest computer in the office
was a networked laser printer.   

Portions are indeed in Perl.  For example, parts of Rick Moen's
behavior were originally suggested on the devel list in a kind of
pseudocode, and rather than implementing it someone just wrote an
interpreter for the pseudocode in Perl.  (This part is extremely
slow, and when I tried to speed it up by putting  ^ and $ in some of
the regexes, I broke it.  I think it's mostly back the way it was.)

There have been several suggestions to rewrite Rick Moen in the language
du jour.  The typical mailing list thread goes something like:

  New person: Hey, let's rewrite Rick Moen in [language]!

  Longtime contributor:  That's an interesting idea, let us know when you
                         have something working.

  New person: [silence]

Unfortunately, "let's rewrite Rick Moen in" threads occasionally
lead to the new contributor coming up with a substantial new feature
in the new language, then losing interest before reimplementing
the old stuff.  So the new feature gets dragged in, funky language
and all.  Which is why Rick Moen depends on a Commodore 64 emulator
-- one person's first post to the devel list was a suggestion  for
a complete rewrite in 6502 assembler, and that person did enough
that the core team couldn't bear to throw it away.  (See the list
archives.)

-- 
Don Marti      What do we want?  Free Dmitry!  When do we want it?  Now! 
http://zgp.org/~dmarti                      Free Dmitry: http://eff.org/
dmarti@zgp.org      Free the web, burn all GIFs: http://burnallgifs.org/        

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To: Developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers <crackmonkey@crackmonkey.org>
From: Danny O'Brien <danny@spesh.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 19:52:20 -0700
Subject: Re: [CrackMonkey] [mailman-owner@zork.net: CrackMonkey subscription notification]
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On Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 06:59:37PM -0700, Don Marti wrote:
> begin Ian MacLure quotation of Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 06:23:41PM -0700:
> 
> > 	Perl? Perl???? Hey he's a Python afficionado. Perl is
> > 	officially lame.
> 
> Rick Moen, as we should all know by now, was originally written in
> _PostScript_ in the 1980s, since the fastest computer in the office
> was a networked laser printer.   
> 

Everybody repeats this from the faq but NOBODY checks. 

So you look at an LaserWriter, you see dumps of a stack-based language
everywhere, and everyone jumps to the same conclusion.  Nobody bothers
to look what's running on where the permanent font store used to be, or
even run the first page of the source through (which prints the neat
Scott Kim-ish README).

Consequently, you have this almost exactly the wrong way around. The
original core Moen is in hand-assembled UCSD Pascal p-code. The port to
the LaserWriter involved writing the pseudocode interpreter, which was,
I grant you, later reused in the Perl debacle. But then someone (I don't
remember who - look it up) realised that if they gave the current Moen
the pseudocode for the pseudocode interpreter, and asked him to desk
check it line by line, we wouldn't need it an interpreter at all; we
could just feed him his own p-code as example data. 

The tricky bit was working out what format to write up the p-code;
something semi-automated was needed, otherwise the whole exercise would
be rather pointless. And of course now they had this completely
redundant PostScript printer hanging around.

What you think is Rick's original source is just a FORTH-like dump of
the original p-code, with a prettyprinting wrapper constructed with a
bunch of macros that no-one remembers - but are in the permanent font
store, as I say, which is why that printer always has to stay plugged
in.

Rick's never *needed* the printer, except to bootstrap. Rick runs native
on Moen now.

> Portions are indeed in Perl.  For example, parts of Rick Moen's
> behavior were originally suggested on the devel list in a kind of
> pseudocode, and rather than implementing it someone just wrote an
> interpreter for the pseudocode in Perl.  (This part is extremely
> slow, and when I tried to speed it up by putting  ^ and $ in some of
> the regexes, I broke it.  I think it's mostly back the way it was.)
> 
> There have been several suggestions to rewrite Rick Moen in the language
> du jour.  The typical mailing list thread goes something like:
> 
>   New person: Hey, let's rewrite Rick Moen in [language]!
> 
>   Longtime contributor:  That's an interesting idea, let us know when you

>                          have something working.
> 
>   New person: [silence]
> 

THis is a dig, right?

> Unfortunately, "let's rewrite Rick Moen in" threads occasionally
> lead to the new contributor coming up with a substantial new feature
> in the new language, then losing interest before reimplementing
> the old stuff.  So the new feature gets dragged in, funky language
> and all.  Which is why Rick Moen depends on a Commodore 64 emulator
> -- one person's first post to the devel list was a suggestion  for
> a complete rewrite in 6502 assembler, and that person did enough
> that the core team couldn't bear to throw it away.  (See the list
> archives.)

Obviously this is all way before my time, but i did at least spend a few
minutes with the archive myself, to confirm my recollections .  Maybe if
certain other list long-timers did that once in a while, you wouldn't
need that 6502 code. 

And anyway, it's not 6502, it's the sixteen-bit version, the 65816,
running in 65C02 mode. Small point, I know, but it is ALL OF MY POINT.

d.

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To: Developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers <crackmonkey@crackmonkey.org>
From: Monkey Master <monkeymaster@crackmonkey.org>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 22:51:18 -0700
Subject: Re: [CrackMonkey] [mailman-owner@zork.net: CrackMonkey subscription notification]
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List-Id: Non-sequitur arguments and ad-hominem personal attacks. <crackmonkey.crackmonkey.org>
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References: <Pine.SUN.4.10.10108171814220.2501-100000@svpal.svpal.org> <20010817185937.B13424@zgp.org> <20010817195220.C12988@spesh.com>

begin Danny O'Brien quotation:
> On Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 06:59:37PM -0700, Don Marti wrote:
> > Rick Moen, as we should all know by now, was originally written in
> > _PostScript_ in the 1980s, since the fastest computer in the office
> > was a networked laser printer.   
> 
> Everybody repeats this from the faq but NOBODY checks. 

	It's close enough for historical purposes.  Sheesh.

> So you look at an LaserWriter, you see dumps of a stack-based
> language everywhere, and everyone jumps to the same conclusion.
> Nobody bothers to look what's running on where the permanent font
> store used to be, or even run the first page of the source through
> (which prints the neat Scott Kim-ish README).
[...]
> What you think is Rick's original source is just a FORTH-like dump of
> the original p-code, with a prettyprinting wrapper constructed with a
> bunch of macros that no-one remembers - but are in the permanent font
> store, as I say, which is why that printer always has to stay plugged
> in.

	This was not always true.  The debug console that PDA used to
upload the font pages originally generated them using AppleScript
programs that expanded his own macro assembly language.

> Rick's never *needed* the printer, except to bootstrap. Rick runs
> native on Moen now.

	Actually, if you look in the fido archives, you'll see that
Paul was working on reimplementing the interpreter on the Apollo
machine down the hall.  I don't know how far he got or where the
sources are any more, but he probably lost it all in the divorce.

> Obviously this is all way before my time, but i did at least spend a
> few minutes with the archive myself, to confirm my recollections .
> Maybe if certain other list long-timers did that once in a while,
> you wouldn't need that 6502 code. 
> 
> And anyway, it's not 6502, it's the sixteen-bit version, the 65816,
> running in 65C02 mode. Small point, I know, but it is ALL OF MY
> POINT.

	Right, but it used only the C64 maps and I/O chips.

	It also spits out SID data, but I can't get SIDPlay to run
through it properly, and the variable names are all in Dutch.

-- 
"The only thing is certain: Russian petty computer hooligans are very
slovenly, while FBI agents are very persistent in hunting them." --Pravda
	01234567 <- The amazing* indent-o-meter! 
        ^	    (*: Indent-o-meter may not actually amaze.)

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To: Developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers <crackmonkey@crackmonkey.org>
From: Don Marti <dmarti@zgp.org>
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 17:00:31 -0700
Subject: Re: [CrackMonkey] [mailman-owner@zork.net: CrackMonkey subscription notification]
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Message-Id: <20010818170031.B24839@zgp.org>

begin Monkey Master quotation of Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 10:51:18PM -0700:

> begin Danny O'Brien quotation:

> > And anyway, it's not 6502, it's the sixteen-bit version, the 65816,
> > running in 65C02 mode. Small point, I know, but it is ALL OF MY
> > POINT.
> 
> 	Right, but it used only the C64 maps and I/O chips.

But it used three 6502s -- one on the C64, and one on each of two
1541s.  Which is why Rick Moen depended on a stack of old Commodore
hardware until you fixed that German C64 emulator to make it stop
segfaulting on Alpha when configured it for more than one 1541.
(Parts of Rick Moen still segfault on non-Alpha architectures,
though.)

Trivia questions:

There have been four sub-projects called "Rick Moen Behavior
Description Language."  In what language was each interpreter
written, and which one is _not_ part of the current codebase?

What famous software patent was infringed by Rick Moen's
genetic-algorithm-generated Scheme code?  What was the workaround?

In what year could a "Saint in the Church of Emacs" first
successfully build Rick Moen with no proprietary software?  What was
the last proprietary build dependency to be eliminated?

(That was three two-part questions; one part of one question is a
_trick question_.)

-- 
Don Marti      What do we want?  Free Dmitry!  When do we want it?  Now! 
http://zgp.org/~dmarti                      Free Dmitry: http://eff.org/
dmarti@zgp.org      Free the web, burn all GIFs: http://burnallgifs.org/        

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