About the Chipdir
How this site is being generated
The boring part
Most of the data is of course gotten via the Internet and mainly via email.
Lots is also gotten from WWW sites and all kinds of other sources.
I do these things generally under DOS/Windows3.1 on a 486/66 dx2 system
with a simple external 14k4 modem*.
I mainly use Trumpet Winsock, NetScape, Eudora and Window's File manager.
Things that are interesting for the ChipDir are saved in a special directory
and once in a while I copy them to a simple 1.4 Mbyte HD* floppy disk and ...
The slightly more interesting part
I load them with a program that I wrote myself once upon a time, long
ago (to work under Xenix) called 'frdos' and which very efficiently
loads files from a MS-DOS file system floppy to a UNIX machine.
The UNIX system in question is a DEC Alpha system running DEC UNIX
3.2. Why? Well my former employer thought it would be an improvement
over Xenix (which I used to develop embedded software before, but he
didn't like because of emotional reasons). Enfin I think you should
be prepared to change so now and then and I got used to X-Windows and
an enormous screen protruding at me leaving hardly any working space
on my desk and being enormously white all over, while you're most of
the time just typing away very small characters in 1% of the screen.
The directory that is copied from the MS-DOS is called 000, 001, 002 etc.
(Now at 106) and stored in a special directory. First I'll open all
the *.txt files in 'vi' the very nice screen editor from Unix, that is
quite intuitive once you're used to it after a couple of years. ;-)
(No just kidding, I even prefer to use VI under DOS/Windows, since
it only uses the normal typewriter keys and you don't need the mouse
or any of the special keys like 'delete' or any of the function keys.
The cursor keys generally work however which is handy.)
Ok, now the data from the stuff that I imported from my DOS/W3.1
machine and which has all kinds of shapes and forms is converted to
source code for the ChipDir.
It's getting more exciting already...
What's this then that source code for the ChipDir?
Of course I don't type in the stuff in HTML directly, since I'm
no masochist and wasn't around december 1994 when the WWW was
getting very popular at once, because of the Mosaic browser.
Enfin in the months and even two years that followed I developed a
language based on old ideas of mine and also others on the
compiler mailing list and newsgroups that I followed for a while.
(This was not a joined operation, I had though about these concepts
already around 1981 far before even C was generally accepted,
but I noticed when I was subscribed to this mailing list for a
while that others had also had the same notion. If ever we
would have had Internet when I was young...
He seems to cut the crap and tell us what it's all about
The language is based on a position dependent syntax. Traditional
languages like C, Pascal etc. are mostly a mixture of positional
dependant and non position dependent languages. For example:
You can take all lines in Pascal program and put them all after
each other without linefeeds and the program will mean the same.
When you do this with BASIC it won't work...
In Algol it will work (If I remember correctly) but in C the
generally standard language you can't before the preprocessor
stage. (Think of the '#include' and '//comment' parts...)
In a pure position dependant language you don't need '{' and '}'
or 'begin' and 'end' delimiters to partition sections, you
only need to tab the subsection a bit more.
For example:
if x=y
this part to be executed if yes
else
this part to be executed if no
And this clearly (for those that are sensitive) marks the problem:
not all humanly desirable constructs like if () then else can be expressed
in a purily hierarchical manner.
And now it's really getting exciting
But I have to go to sleep now, so I'll have to continue this later...
Write me if you want to see this story continued...
No need to explain, just say: Yes-to-tech!
Using good HTML
If I had more time I'd check this site regurarly using www.netmechanic.com
etc... But that's a lot of work...
- Site version is

- Page last edited on 20010429
- Page was never integrally checked for link correctness