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Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f

From Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org>
Newsgroups alt.sys.pdp10
Subject Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f
Date 2026-09-02 15:23 -0300
Organization Primarily biological and memetic
Message-ID <87bjaf7br8.fsf@debian> (permalink)
References (16 earlier) <874igb7fmv.fsf_-_@debian> <7wwlt6rhw6.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> <874iga5jgr.fsf@debian> <87zey244ak.fsf@debian> <7wh5k95x5u.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>

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Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> writes:
> Kragen Javier Sitaker wrote:
>> Perhaps this grayscale is a product of the “PDP-11 emulator running the
>> original XGP driver code” mentioned in the README
>
> Yes.  Just printing the raw pixels to the output PDF doesn't look good,
> and certainly nothing like the original XGP output.  Angelo Papenhoff
> and I did the "print emulation" trying to match the originals.  There's
> a metaball type model for dispersing and blending individual print dots.
> You can see the code in the xgp files here: https://github.com/aap/pdp11

That sounds pretty reasonable, and vectorizing bilevel font bitmaps
sounds a lot easier than vectorizing grayscale, which is what I thought
the task was.  Still more than I'm willing to commit to this week, but
substantially less overwhelming.

Under US law, font bitmaps are uncopyrightable.  But I’m in Argentina,
and I assume you’re in Norway.  What’s the legal situation in Norway?

Stimulated by my embarrassment over thinking TJ6 was called FASTAR, I
poked around the repo a bit, but couldn't find which code you meant that
might be rasterizing a metaball model.

>> I wonder if TJ6 could be hacked to output a .dvi-like list of (glyph,
>> x, y) triples?
>
> The output from TJ6 is an "XGP file", which is ASCII text interspersed
> with control codes.  This is sent by the printer spooler to the PDP-11,
> along with font data.  The PDP-11 does the rendering and sends it to the
> XGP for output to continuous roll paper.  There's a knife to cut the
> paper into pages.

I see.  Does that mean that the “XGP file” has glyph indices but not (x,
y) positions in it, because the PDP-11 has to produce some of those (x,
y) positions from the font metrics?  That might actually be a format
capable of producing superior PDF rendering.

Kragen

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Thread

boxing all integers (was Re: Resources to learn common lisp?) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-29 17:52 -0300
  Re: boxing all integers (was Re: Resources to learn common lisp?) Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2026-08-30 06:43 +0000
    Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-30 13:11 -0300
      Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2026-08-31 05:14 +0000
        Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-08-31 06:54 +0000
        Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-31 13:43 -0300
          Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-31 13:56 -0300
            Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2026-08-31 13:34 -0700
              Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2026-08-31 18:12 -0400
                Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-09-01 15:12 +0000
            Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2026-09-01 05:59 +0000
              Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-02 15:23 -0300
          Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers) Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2026-09-01 05:45 +0000
            Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers) Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2026-09-01 07:07 +0000
            Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers) Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2026-09-01 17:36 -0400
              the history of the Hershey fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-02 15:55 -0300
                Re: the history of the Hershey fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-02 21:31 +0000
                Re: the history of the Hershey fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-03 09:59 -0300
            Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-02 16:35 -0300
              Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-02 21:50 +0000
                PDF file compactness (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-03 12:06 -0300
              Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers) Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2026-09-03 05:42 +0000
                Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-03 12:50 -0300
            origin of XGP fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-28 10:44 -0300
              Re: origin of XGP fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> - 2026-09-28 07:33 -0700
                Re: origin of XGP fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.invalid> - 2026-09-28 22:53 +0800
      Re: reprints of old AI memos (was Re: boxing all integers)f Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2026-09-06 08:40 +0000

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