The Question of Braces in APLASCII 4365

RAV

it most certainly was not fun!

I did my master's thesis using that text system (666 TEXT, IIRC) -- after the first pbutt, the golfball had to be changed, and the paper fed in again -- at which point it would slip or skew, or misfeed on a bent corner -- on top of that, I was on a dial-up line, and the telco would drop the line frequently, which meant I had to save every single change (which took ages) and any page that looked like it was registered half-decently would be ruined by NO CARRIER DETECTED messages

after struggling with this pooe for course notes and system documentation, etc, that Blue SOD looked like sweet relief

as an aside, I was surprised how many people paid their way through a masters, attended the lectures, did the course work, took the exams and then couldn't find the necessary energy required to complete the dissertation -- there, but for the Grace of God . .

I finally delivered a day late, and apologised to my tutor -- "are many of the rest of them late?", I enquired -- "you're the first", he said

IIRC, that 666 TEXT allowed for 4 different golfballs (or was that a later version?) -- not that it mattered: the chances of getting 4 pbuttes registered properly were infinitesimally small

daisywheel printers, oddly enough, had much better paper control (as well as being much quieter)

kids nowadays don't realise how easy they've got it . . . phil