Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Kragen Javier Sitaker Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2026 13:11:04 -0300 Organization: Primarily biological and memetic Lines: 96 Message-ID: <874igb7fmv.fsf_-_@debian> References: <874inbqdz7.fsf@mariorosell.es> <110es1g$1kk17$1@dont-email.me> <110fj4q$1r13s$5@dont-email.me> <110guci$26cjr$1@dont-email.me> <110i789$2iqm8$7@dont-email.me> <110j4qk$2q1p4$1@dont-email.me> <110l0v9$3av52$1@dont-email.me> <110nf0q$3vra6$3@dont-email.me> <87y0gg62cx.fsf@nightsong.com> <110rfqf$142ot$1@dont-email.me> <111ne5o$vsm3$3@dont-email.me> <111pbk6$36pi7$1@dont-email.me> <87qzlqgiyx.fsf@gmail.com> <111t96n$6sqq$1@dont-email.me> <111tev9$8hea$1@dont-email.me> <875x2zzres.fsf@nightsong.com> <86se5zr6ez.fsf@williamsburg.bawden.org> <87mru47iou.fsf_-_@debian> <7wecfgrtuh.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2026 16:13:22 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; logging-data="232347"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+XwQHGGdT3OTyL2mQwVabN"; posting-host="17e4bfb8ab6ea032c29af014ffd0f502" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/28.2 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:G+e6GxC6HqdYI6pxTHUo9Qfdb54= sha1:gwh1nR+IL39pkpDI1AEy7jZG7mQ= sha256:bdmO/Ok7evhJaYmQKOC83Ijj3Yyc/VJ+gtre0Q4IfUM= sha1:OFgdhSpG/nWq9efa0KxU6+lL888= sha256:ZCOzND09Fi70lrgwlSvKOxVIeVia86nky8c7kOhbu5Q= Xref: csiph.com alt.sys.pdp10:9974 Lars Brinkhoff writes: > Kragen Javier Sitaker wrote: >> Alan Bawden wrote: >>> There's a paper by Guy Steele titled "Fast Arithmetic in MacLisp" >>> that describes all these techniques in detail: >>> . >> >> Thank you very much! I’d never read it. For the peanut gallery, >> that’s AIM-421.pdf > > I'll gratefully seize this opportunity to brag about "printing" some of > these memos fresh from source. > > https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/ai-memo-reprints/tree/master/mit/aim-421 That’s wonderful! I should have realized that they were prepared with some kind of runoff-like computer typesetting system, but I didn’t know what it was; I hadn’t heard of FASTAR before (it looks to be very much in the spirit of RUNOFF) and I’m delighted that the source document has been preserved. The reprint is considerably more readable than MIT’s scan. Not to look a gift thoroughbred in the mouth, but the fonts look a bit pixelated. But presumably they were vector fonts of some sort, maybe Hershey fonts, rather than raster scans or original pixel fonts? I wonder if the fonts could be rerendered as vector fonts? That would make the reprint PDFs both much smaller and more readable. In case they do happen to be Hershey fonts, I wrote a small BSD-licensed Hershey font library a couple of years ago in C which may be of some use, at least as an inspiration or reference point. (As an aside, I also converted the IMLAC Scroll Saver font you had recovered into a Hershey font.) Here’s an excerpt from an XPM of the reprint (somewhat mangled by repeated resampling, but still preserving some of the blockiness) so you can see what I mean: " ", " . + @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ + # # ", " # $ % & * = - - - - - - - - - - ; > * , ' ) ", " # ! ~ { ] ^ / / / / / / / / / / ( _ : < [ } ", " | 1 2 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 & 6 7 ) # # # 8 9 0 a b c d e / / / / / / / / / / f g h = i j 5 3 k 5 4 l m n o 7 . 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