MUDMAN

[36bit]

From the book "The MDL Programming Environment":

Most of the documentation subsumsed in this manual is from published and unpublished memos of the Programming Technology Division of the M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science. As a general rule, updates and revisions to this and other PTD documents concerning MDL are available online in the directory "MUDMAN" at MIT-DMS.

[larsbrinkhoff]

So far no trace of this unfortunately.

[larsbrinkhoff]

XX:<MDL.DOCUMENTATION> had these files:

chaos.doc.1
fing.mud.2
mat.txt.1
medit.doc.5
mend.doc.4
muddle.ordeix.1
muddle.order.1
mud.mid.2
newstruc.txt.2

[larsbrinkhoff]

The only traces from DM: MUDMAN; are:

MUDDLE RECENT
ABSTR  RECENT
AUTREP RECENT
MNEME  RECENT

MNEME is something from the Muddle standard library.

[larsbrinkhoff]

File names from tape database may have clues what to look for:

 MUDMAN  ABSTR   INFO
 MUDMAN  ARC     MANUAL
 MUDMAN  ASSEM   DOC
 MUDMAN  ASSEM   INFO
 MUDMAN  ASSEM   JCR012
 MUDMAN  CASE    INFO
 MUDMAN  COMBAT  INFO
 MUDMAN  COMFIL  INFO
 MUDMAN  COMPOS  DOC
 MUDMAN  CRITIC  INFO
 MUDMAN  DEBUGR  INFO
 MUDMAN  DECL    MEMO
 MUDMAN  DESGRP  JEB003
 MUDMAN  DFL     INFO
 MUDMAN  EDIT    XNDR01
 MUDMAN  FSCAN   INFO
 MUDMAN  GCINFO  JBTB02
 MUDMAN  GLUE    INFO
 MUDMAN  INKING  INFO
 MUDMAN  IRS     (MEMO)
 MUDMAN  ITIME   DOC
 MUDMAN  L-M     INFO
 MUDMAN  MAPS    INFO
 MUDMAN  MARIAN  XSG002
 MUDMAN  MCDOC   (MEMO)
 MUDMAN  MEND    INFO
 MUDMAN  MICROM  INFO
 MUDMAN  MOLECU  MEMO
 MUDMAN  MONITR  INFO
 MUDMAN  MUDCAL  DOC
 MUDMAN  MUDCOM  INFO
 MUDMAN  MUDDLE  ORDER
 MUDMAN  MUDLIB  (MEMO)
 MUDMAN  MUDMAN  INFO
 MUDMAN  MUDTAB  INFO
 MUDMAN  NCOMBA  INFO
 MUDMAN  PICTUR  INFO
 MUDMAN  PURE    INFO
 MUDMAN  RSUBR   INFO
 MUDMAN  SKIP    ORDER
 MUDMAN  SSVMUD  INFO
 MUDMAN  STACK   OVRFLW
 MUDMAN  SUBRFY  DOC
 MUDMAN  TMPUSE  JBTB05
 MUDMAN  TRACE   ORDER
 MUDMAN  TYPES   1
 MUDMAN  UGRF    RECENT
 MUDMAN  UNDO    INFO
 MUDMAN  XABSTR  DOC
 MUDMAN  XABSTR  INFO

[ZoBoRf]

Progress ist made:
https://twitter.com/larsbrinkhoff/status/1294641786728529921?s=20

[larsbrinkhoff]

Thanks for the reminder. Yes, I found an ARC (ITS archive) file on a PDP-10 backup tape. It seems to have the full Muddle manual. I have contacted Greg Pfister, and he agreed to request a copy of the file from MIT. I also found the SYS.11.01 memo, which I believe is the Muddle Primer. With some luck, we may be able to see the contents later this year.

[ZoBoRf]

Some time ago I have produced a new PDF version of the Muddle documentation. I have put it on github now: https://github.com/ZoBoRf/mdl-docs). The PDF file is here: https://github.com/ZoBoRf/mdl-docs/blob/master/tex/mdl.pdf

[larsbrinkhoff]

@eswenson1, did you get ToTS files from the MUDMAN directory? E.g. MUDMAN; ARC MANUAL has a full manual, and there are files like MUDMAN; SUBRFY DOC that describe individual features.

[eswenson1]

I did. I have all that. I was going to commit the SUBRY doc. And whenI get ASYLUM and MADMAN working, I’ll commit all that.

TRIVIA uses ASYLUM and MADMAN and I haven’t managed to get ASYLUM working yet. Because ASYLUM and MADMAN use direct page reads and writes and random seek file I/O, they can easily get MPV errors (which they are). It appears that the DATA-IPRINT functionality is working, but when an ASYLUM is opened and the files are found in the MFD (of the ASYLUM) during a read operation, incorrect offsets (disk or mem) are computed. The results vary. Sometimes you get MPV errors, other times you get back the wrong value (different from what you stored).

The logic in AREAD and APRINT is complicated and I haven’t been able to isolate what is going awry.

[eswenson1]

@eswenson1, did you get ToTS files from the MUDMAN directory? E.g. MUDMAN; ARC MANUAL has a full manual, and there are files like MUDMAN; SUBRFY DOC that describe individual features.

I'll commit MUDMAN;ARC MANUAL and MUDMAN;SUBRFY DOC soon. I them them staged in git with updated timestamps.txt, but I have other changes right now in that repo and don't (yet) want to unstage other commits.

[larsbrinkhoff]

Great! There's an issue for it already: PDP-10/its#844