No matter though. This kind of thing printed on long life type media just might prove useful and long lasting. One can mail ordinary software on paper!
Actually, one only needs a few humans to recover the data. Could be just one human.
Say what you want about paper, but it doesn't suffer downtime and is very robust. I'm not seriously advocating people archive to paper this way, but it is an interesting exercise.
My computer code from the 80's that I put onto paper still exists. I might get a floppy to work, but that means maintaining the stuff to read the floppy too. Now, for hobby reasons, I have that, and some floppies do work.
But they work, until they don't.
Paper?
It just works.
In my life, I will open up a notebook and write down and draw anything I find really important. It doesn't take long, and I've got all that important stuff to draw on later.
Recently, I was in a place where it made sense to teach sheet metal unfolding to somebody. My original notes on paper, along with some BASIC programs and math expressions work the same as they always did. All one needs is pencil and paper to get the unfolding done. The BASIC programs were just to automate some use cases, and the device it was written for doesn't even exist today, but for collectors.
However, a quick look on Google Play delivered a nice BASIC. Didn't take but an hour to input the programs, debug and do the same things I did back then.
I like paper. A lot.
I like digital too. A lot.
But it's for very different reasons, and it's not so much irony as it is the capture, sharing and reuse of information. This statement may be surprising:
If one knows how to use paper, it's an extremely affordable and robust means of communication.
Funny how things work, isn't it?
For me, the most robust digital archive is the ordinary ASCII text file. Those tend to work on most anything. Add to that a basic bitmap, and the two of those sort of get one to the place where paper always is.
Sometimes I will archive by taking pictures or scanning paper and making text files. Over time, that has been the most robust means of archiving / communicating in the digital realm. When I'm running Windows, the two most often used programs, besides the web browser, actually are notepad and paint. I use the Smile out of notepad and paint and people often wonder.
My default use of those are for communication purposes. Documentation, education, etc...
I see people use all sorts of stuff, and make no mistake, it's spiffy! But, unnecessary. Last time I applied Paint to a documentation problem, the person watching me commented, "I've never seen anyone use paint like that before..." and this guy was a certified technician. Smart dude.
What we were doing was capturing tooling drawings. A CAM system requires a tool geometry be specified so that the G-CODE program can be generated. We had bought some goofy mills. Someone else had made a tool specification that was wrong. No docs.
So I googled the tools, found the info, and just captured the essentials into a bitmap, modified the CAM spec, and dropped a picture of that geometry in that same bitmap. Mix in a few lines and text annotations, and it's complete, one file, dead simple, cross platform, etc...
Others used word, some vector drawing thing, text, links to web pages, and in general it all was a big mess and it took time. Paint and text files do not take much time. They are lean, and they map directly back to paper easily, and the same kinds of techniques apply to those and paper overall too.
My Note 4 phone is kind of awesome. It has a pen and a little application that makes bitmaps! I can capture something, pull out the pen, annotate it, save it, print it ( and yes, I will actually print from the phone to a networked printer from time to time), and I'm kind of done. The same skills I learned on paper work perfectly on the darn phone. And it beats paint and text files in most cases too.
Never underestimate the power of paper and the few skills needed to make good use of paper. These are very basic, human communication skills that play out all over the place.
So I liked this little project for those reasons.
Somewhere, I've got an invaders game on paper tape. It's 8Kb or so. Once I just read it, typing in the bytes to play the game in order to show someone old tech and as a curio. Didn't take too long.
That same exercise with this project could mean a binary representation on the sheet complete with instructions for recovering it all on a single sheet of paper! Print this on the right paper and it will very easily out live our kids. Cheap as all get out too. Those future people will absolutely be able to take a photo and recover anything. Doing the same with hardware storage, magnetic media, tape, etc... isn't likely.
That's cool man! And it's very, very robust, as paper typically tends to be. The floppies and magnetic media from that time period is all gonna die. So will most optical media. When I can find that old roll of paper tape, it's still gonna contain that invaders game, and it's still gonna work, assuming we've still got x86 computers to run it on....
It's not paper, but it works like paper does. The leader of the media contains human readable information one would need to build a reader for the rest of the data.
Well, the paper I have from the eighties still work.. all code there is accessible. None of the 3.5" floppies I have from the nineties are readable. Not a single one. Incidentally they were stored exactly the same way as my 5 1/4" floppies, which *are* readable (and some of them are much older too), and my 9-track CCTs which are also readable. But not the 3.5" floppies. I have the hardware (lots) and the software, didn't help in this case. Turns out you can't very well predict how media will survive. Except with paper.. the pitfalls are pretty much known at this point (acidic paper, type of ink etc.)
I shouldn't have turned down that big laser printer I could have gotten for nearly nothing..
but hey, I think maybe that other printer I got is actually a laser printer too, although smaller. Haven't had time to check.
You're not alone in using notepad, text files, and paint for documenting, designing, and storing information. I have used notepad for creating and storing text documents and paint for block diagrams, schematics, mechanical drawings, printed circuit layouts, and more since they first came out.
Sure, there are better tools available now, and I do use them for larger projects, but for small simple things paint and notepad make it fast and easy. Also makes creating a one or two page printed document a breeze.
When I was looking that Oberon system over, I noted it had a bitmap and text file application. If one of us goes nuts and actually does bootstrap Oberon onto the P2... it could actually be pretty useful.
When I was looking that Oberon system over, I noted it had a bitmap and text file application. If one of us goes nuts and actually does bootstrap Oberon onto the P2... it could actually be pretty useful.
I have mixed feelings on that idea. On one hand I like the idea of having some simple OS and tools for the P2 that allow us to do useful things like that.
On the other hand I don't think we need another OS to fragment software market. Look at the problems Loopy is having trying to install software for working with FPGA's on Linux.
Then again, as long as the software creates standard files like .txt, .bmp, .jpg, etc. that can be shared it would be useful.
Well, we could just make tools for P2 and skip the OS!
I ran an emulation today, and given support for the zoomable window area, it's an intriguing and simple environment. Personally, I like that kind of stuff. Most likely outcome is no Oberon at all, and if there is one, it's a curio / educational tool.
potatohead
Posts: 10,261
Comments
Paper endures!
http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/
In particular, I think he's applied more robust error correction while at the same time keeping it human readable, with the blocks, etc...
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/574/7105/8d/www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/extremetech-page-paperback-gif.gif
No matter though. This kind of thing printed on long life type media just might prove useful and long lasting. One can mail ordinary software on paper!
Besides, it's just cool. And I like cool.
I guess one would require a good scanner or a digital camera to recapture anything. I gave up on my scanner. It was just too slow.
The old IBM cavaet applies...
Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate.
Say what you want about paper, but it doesn't suffer downtime and is very robust. I'm not seriously advocating people archive to paper this way, but it is an interesting exercise.
My computer code from the 80's that I put onto paper still exists. I might get a floppy to work, but that means maintaining the stuff to read the floppy too. Now, for hobby reasons, I have that, and some floppies do work.
But they work, until they don't.
Paper?
It just works.
In my life, I will open up a notebook and write down and draw anything I find really important. It doesn't take long, and I've got all that important stuff to draw on later.
Recently, I was in a place where it made sense to teach sheet metal unfolding to somebody. My original notes on paper, along with some BASIC programs and math expressions work the same as they always did. All one needs is pencil and paper to get the unfolding done. The BASIC programs were just to automate some use cases, and the device it was written for doesn't even exist today, but for collectors.
However, a quick look on Google Play delivered a nice BASIC. Didn't take but an hour to input the programs, debug and do the same things I did back then.
I like paper. A lot.
I like digital too. A lot.
But it's for very different reasons, and it's not so much irony as it is the capture, sharing and reuse of information. This statement may be surprising:
If one knows how to use paper, it's an extremely affordable and robust means of communication.
Funny how things work, isn't it?
For me, the most robust digital archive is the ordinary ASCII text file. Those tend to work on most anything. Add to that a basic bitmap, and the two of those sort of get one to the place where paper always is.
Sometimes I will archive by taking pictures or scanning paper and making text files. Over time, that has been the most robust means of archiving / communicating in the digital realm. When I'm running Windows, the two most often used programs, besides the web browser, actually are notepad and paint. I use the Smile out of notepad and paint and people often wonder.
My default use of those are for communication purposes. Documentation, education, etc...
I see people use all sorts of stuff, and make no mistake, it's spiffy! But, unnecessary. Last time I applied Paint to a documentation problem, the person watching me commented, "I've never seen anyone use paint like that before..." and this guy was a certified technician. Smart dude.
What we were doing was capturing tooling drawings. A CAM system requires a tool geometry be specified so that the G-CODE program can be generated. We had bought some goofy mills. Someone else had made a tool specification that was wrong. No docs.
So I googled the tools, found the info, and just captured the essentials into a bitmap, modified the CAM spec, and dropped a picture of that geometry in that same bitmap. Mix in a few lines and text annotations, and it's complete, one file, dead simple, cross platform, etc...
Others used word, some vector drawing thing, text, links to web pages, and in general it all was a big mess and it took time. Paint and text files do not take much time. They are lean, and they map directly back to paper easily, and the same kinds of techniques apply to those and paper overall too.
My Note 4 phone is kind of awesome. It has a pen and a little application that makes bitmaps! I can capture something, pull out the pen, annotate it, save it, print it ( and yes, I will actually print from the phone to a networked printer from time to time), and I'm kind of done. The same skills I learned on paper work perfectly on the darn phone. And it beats paint and text files in most cases too.
Never underestimate the power of paper and the few skills needed to make good use of paper. These are very basic, human communication skills that play out all over the place.
So I liked this little project for those reasons.
Somewhere, I've got an invaders game on paper tape. It's 8Kb or so. Once I just read it, typing in the bytes to play the game in order to show someone old tech and as a curio. Didn't take too long.
That same exercise with this project could mean a binary representation on the sheet complete with instructions for recovering it all on a single sheet of paper! Print this on the right paper and it will very easily out live our kids. Cheap as all get out too. Those future people will absolutely be able to take a photo and recover anything. Doing the same with hardware storage, magnetic media, tape, etc... isn't likely.
That's cool man! And it's very, very robust, as paper typically tends to be. The floppies and magnetic media from that time period is all gonna die. So will most optical media. When I can find that old roll of paper tape, it's still gonna contain that invaders game, and it's still gonna work, assuming we've still got x86 computers to run it on....
It's not paper, but it works like paper does. The leader of the media contains human readable information one would need to build a reader for the rest of the data.
Very cool.
I shouldn't have turned down that big laser printer I could have gotten for nearly nothing..
but hey, I think maybe that other printer I got is actually a laser printer too, although smaller. Haven't had time to check.
-Tor
You're not alone in using notepad, text files, and paint for documenting, designing, and storing information. I have used notepad for creating and storing text documents and paint for block diagrams, schematics, mechanical drawings, printed circuit layouts, and more since they first came out.
Sure, there are better tools available now, and I do use them for larger projects, but for small simple things paint and notepad make it fast and easy. Also makes creating a one or two page printed document a breeze.
IMO, "TWAIN" scrapes the bottom of the pointless acronym bucket.
I have mixed feelings on that idea. On one hand I like the idea of having some simple OS and tools for the P2 that allow us to do useful things like that.
On the other hand I don't think we need another OS to fragment software market. Look at the problems Loopy is having trying to install software for working with FPGA's on Linux.
Then again, as long as the software creates standard files like .txt, .bmp, .jpg, etc. that can be shared it would be useful.
I ran an emulation today, and given support for the zoomable window area, it's an intriguing and simple environment. Personally, I like that kind of stuff. Most likely outcome is no Oberon at all, and if there is one, it's a curio / educational tool.
As an educational tool, it might be worth doing.