Re: new addon: poplog (long posting)

From: S.Isard@ed.ac.uk
Date: Wed Apr 11 2001 - 21:44:36 CEST


> Michele Andreoli wrote:

> source poplog

For Bourne shells, you use poplog.sh, instead of just poplog.

> Generally speaking, I'm not able to understand what it the first step
> (maybe, I'm currently a little tired). The package is not in the
> free-software style: I cannot find the common starting point in my
> reading, such a README, a an HISTORY, a CHANGELOG.

There is a README at the top level of the tar file, and I included it
separately on the ftp site. Is it not there? Or do you mean it isn't the
right kind of README, in spite of its name? Toward the bottom there
should be installation instructions, and step #4 says to source
$usepop/pop/com/poplog.sh . After that you say 'pop11' and you get
the pop11 prompt, or 'ved' and you get the ved editor, which is the best
way of reading the documentation.

The history goes back for more than 25 years. (Or more like 35 if you
start with the pop2 language that pop11 was a reimplementation of for the
pdp11 computer.) Individual files have their history at the bottom, but a
history of the whole thing... well, it's beyond me, and probably anyone.

However, it is only recently that it has been offered as a free package
that people in isolation could try to run on their own machines, and it
could certainly benefit from the experience of people like you who produce
distributions intended for that kind of audience. Poplog developed in
university and industrial environments with large multi-user machines and
the users often all together in terminal rooms, and always there were
local system developers who users could talk to. It is not that there
isn't a huge amount of documentation, rather that, as you note, it is
difficult to know where to begin. I tried to make some suggestions in the
README, but I would welcome advice on how to do it better.

I know you are busy (and I understand about being tired) but I hope you
won't give up before getting it going, because I think you would
appreciate it.

Stephen Isard

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