Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

cs.princeton.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 171 posts

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#131

Post by FrojoS »

ddingus wrote: post #128
syntaxfree wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empowering for some, maybe. The anecdote reinforces the now dominant view that networking is everything and people deserve benefits and opportunities that at a different time might be labeled nepotism or favoritism. Honestly the best opportunities I’ve had in life (in different decades, too) were all linked to favoritism by this one friend. The message this sends is that I should have more well-connected successful f…

It is both empowering and negative.[0] I got the same mentoring early in life. Networking matters. And yeah the system sucks and is a poor meritocracy, if that itself is even the better state of affairs. Regardless, we live in the system we have and we either work it to our benefit or not. Meta: [0] Naysayers, knowledge is power. Prior to said mentoring, I had near completely dismissed networking, believing is was un…

The "system" is just the underlying nature, isn't it? Nature is not a pure meritocracy.

It's more efficient to accomplish work when you work with others, provided you complement each other, and it's easier to work with others if you know them well and can trust them.

Having to find new people frequently, learn who they are, what they are capable of, and if they are trustworthy instead of relying on your existing network is not efficient.

A political system in which these fundamental rules of nature are forcefully suppressed, e.g. a pure meritocracy, is a horrible system, in my view. Fortunately, if something is not efficient, it will be replaced by something efficient in the long run.

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#132

Post by bityard »

AlphaGeekZulu wrote: post #125
syntaxfree wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empowering for some, maybe. The anecdote reinforces the now dominant view that networking is everything and people deserve benefits and opportunities that at a different time might be labeled nepotism or favoritism. Honestly the best opportunities I’ve had in life (in different decades, too) were all linked to favoritism by this one friend. The message this sends is that I should have more well-connected successful f…

I think, I have to clear up a little bit! First, I had no message in relation to empowering/networking or the like! I told the little anecdote with this in mind: if someone found the thesis work of my former girlfriend (now spouse), and investigated its production method, and would correctly conclude that it was typeset in junks on a Berthold ads 3000 typesetting system, then pasted up on film on a lighttable, than b…

Thank you for your anecdote, I thought it was a fun read. I am saddened that the most common response of many HNers is to turn every interesting story into a pessimistic lamentation of society. We need more glass-half-full people around here to balance things out.

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#133

Post by doubled112 »

FrojoS wrote: post #130
zmix wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And don’t bring socioeconomics into it; In 2003, right before a few new nations entered the European Union, the EU had set up several websites, where people from the new, soon to be, member nations could inform themselfes about each of the current EU member states. The document describing Germany mentioned, under the chapter "Employment", that 80% of all jobs in Germany get distributed via social connections. Now I…

In other words 20% of jobs were distributed via the much less efficient and risky approach of job adds, formal applications, HR scanning CVs for buzzwords and credentials, lengthy interview vetting process, etc. I agree with OP. It is empowering that you can achieve more when working with people you know well and trust. You mention that this makes it harder for immigrants. Of course it does. Immigration is disruptive…

I've moved within a Canadian province (about 750km) and it was pretty disruptive.

Friends and family are far, kids are challenging without that village, nobody knows you from around, etc. Like you say, though, the new place looked much better than the old one.

Couldn't imagine doing it from half a planet away.

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#134

Post by dmcq2 »

I wonder if there are more examples of extra spacing in the thesis after correction. It may be evidence the thesis was done on punched cards which were duplicated and corrected. I produced a simple program with no maths only a couple of years later that made up a contents list and attempted spacing the words to get even lines and stop having just a single line of a paragraph on a page and a few things like that but, the output was to a lineprinter so I never thought of doing anything fancy. It did its own spacing so it wouldn't suffer that problem except where the spacing for a section was explicit. The contents list was printed at the end and you moved it to the beginnng yourself :-) I would guess a lot of people did that sort of thing then.

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#135

Post by swamp40 »

> A Typographical Mystery

I suspect many people here just haven't used typewriters extensively. You can adjust how the paper is put in before you start typing. You can move it up a little, over a little, etc.

You can type the whole thing without subscripts, then put the paper in a second time, adjust it a bit and get all your subscripts.

All you need is a repeatable spacing template. And that is easy to do with transparent paper. With three different pieces of parchment paper, you can get three different repeatable levels (regular, subscript, superscript) fairly easily - you just run the paper thru 3 times. Align it, then pull the parchment paper out.

You can do the same thing vertically so you get nice repeatable grids.

It's a lot of work, but not a "mystery".

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#136

Post by justsomehnguy »

weinzierl wrote: post #61
laserbeam wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand, the author argues the typewriters of the era couldn't do that. I have no knowledge about what typewriters existed back then, but any criticism of that claim should also be specific to the time period and not just typewriters in general. (I find it plausible that typewriters in the 60s had the feature you describe, it's just not clear). For the use of whiteout, for example, the date claim is mu…

Having used a typewriter I can confirm what raphlinus wrote above. Moreover you would not have to use tabs necessarily. A typewriter is an analogue device with a roller on a sled. It's not that there are fixed character cells like in a computer. When you press a button the roller usually moves a fixed distance but you can suppress that and position the roller freely. You also can position your characters freely in th…

The thing is what all those spacings are quite consistent for analogue reposition. That is what makes that interesting.

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#137

Post by fsckboy »

leokennis wrote: post #76
fsckboy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> holding down the spacebar will advance the carriage by half a character (and releasing it, in normal use, advances the other half.) backspace did something similar, it was a common error correction to reposition the carriage halfway between two letters to sqeeze-in/add a letter that had been missed (once you get used to computers it's hard to remember that backspace didn't delete anything, it just moved you back)

It moved you back, one space.

I'm talking about a mechanical typewriter, not an electric, what where you, rich? :)

backspace moved you back smoothly as you pressed harder and harder till you let go of it and it encountered the little ratchet thing and stuck there, one space back.

during the transition of smoothly moving back toward the ratchet, you could type another character anywhere on the way, and to catch the ratchet it actually had to move you back beyond one space.

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#138

Post by vt240 »

tniemi wrote: post #116

Mentioned here: UNIX: A History and a Memoir https://www.rulit.me/data/programs/resources/pdf/UNIX-A-Hist... 5.3 Early Formatters The problem was that there was no interactive computer system like CTSS at Princeton; there weren’t any computer termi- nals either. All that was available was punch cards, which only supported upper case letters. I wrote Roff in Fortran (far from ideal, since Fortran was meant for scienti…

"For some years afterwards, there was a student agency that would “roff” documents for students for a modest fee. Roff was thus the first program I ever wrote that was used by other people in any significant way."

That's the best part of the story!

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#139

Post by fsckboy »

benj111 wrote: post #72
fsckboy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> holding down the spacebar will advance the carriage by half a character (and releasing it, in normal use, advances the other half.) backspace did something similar, it was a common error correction to reposition the carriage halfway between two letters to sqeeze-in/add a letter that had been missed (once you get used to computers it's hard to remember that backspace didn't delete anything, it just moved you back)

>once you get used to computers it's hard to remember.... True, but there's a big clue in the name.

that clue could be interpreted as "type a space going backward, wiping out what was there" because 0x20 SPC is an ascii character which is a blank, while "space" on a typewriter is an abstract relative concept, depending entirely where you very finely (but very hard to see) positioned the carriage and it's not guaranteed to be blank if you position it where there is some preexisting typewritten ink.

Re: How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

#140

Post by zellyn »

swamp40 wrote: post #135

> A Typographical Mystery I suspect many people here just haven't used typewriters extensively. You can adjust how the paper is put in before you start typing. You can move it up a little, over a little, etc. You can type the whole thing without subscripts, then put the paper in a second time, adjust it a bit and get all your subscripts. All you need is a repeatable spacing template. And that is easy to do with trans…

I too was wondering about multiple prints. Seems hard to imagine there not being any noticeable variations though.
Post reply on HN