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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...

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