An Extensible Composing and Typsetting Language
Contents
1. page including justi fication hyphenation tabulation leadering and runarounds For those applications where a variety of type faces and proportional spacing are important the next step is to postprocess the input copy for setting on a particular typesetting device Postprocessing is handled auto matically by the system producing a tape paper or magnetic to drive any of the most commonly used typesetting machines To achieve complete typesetting flexibility the CypherText language has been made as device independent as possible This independence has been achieved by defining the input language independently of the characteristics of any specific typesetting device the output is targeted to an idealized typesetting device which does not actually exist Producing output for an actual typesetting device is the function of the post processing program which translates the device inde pendent output to the particularities of the desired typesetting machine Translating the copy for type setting on different machines requires only a change in the OUTPUT command which takes one parameter the name of the desired typesetting machine The OUTPUT command is also used for obtaining drafts at the terminal typewriter like devices being considered a special kind of typesetting machine The device independent translators generally run in parallel with the CypherText language itself as co routines effec tively making2. Computer History Museum www computerhistory org 558 Fall Joint Computer Conference 1970 TABLE IIi Reserved Variables FIELD Controls the number width and placement of columns on the page Also controls the placement of text within the field centered justified flush right flush left HEADER Controls the formatting of the top of each page Title if any spacing and so forth HYPHENATION Controls automatic hyphenation which is done only if the contents of this string name is ON INDENT Specifies the amount of the indentation at the beginning of each paragraph JUSTIFICATION Controls the amount of filling with spaces allowed to justify a line of text LINELEADING Controls the amount of space to be left between lines PAGEHEIGHT Controls the height of each page PAGEWIDTH Controls the width of each page PARAGRAPHLEADING Controls the space to be left between each paragraph TRAILER Controls the formatting of the bottom of each page as with HEADER at the top TYPEFACE Controls the current type face TIMES BODONI etc TYPESIZE Controls the current type size TYPESTYLE Controls the current type style ITALIC BOLD etc A list of the most commonly used reserved string names and their functions is given in Table II Defined String Names Defined string names is another class of string names which has special meaning to CypherText These are strings which the user
3. computerhistory org language This choice was dictated by the fact that the only other option available at the time was FORTRAN FORTRAN was felt to be too awkward and inefficient to use as an implementation language for what is essentially a string handling program It should be noted that higher level languages available on other computers such as PL 1 would be unquestionably preferable for implementing this type of program The programs both first and second passes are reentrant In fact the PDP 10 system allows the first pass to be shared simultaneously by a number of time sharing system users The first pass program occupies about 6500 36 bit words of memory for the code A minimum of 6000 additional words are needed for working storage page buffers string storage etc The size of the second pass programs which are usually loaded with the first pass for a particular run varies considerably with the type setting device se lected All the current second pass programs are less than 2000 words long including both code and working storage The device independence of the PDP 10 input output support allows input text to be accepted from a variety of media The same comment applies to system output No scratch files are written by the system but CypherText does access several support files in the course of a run which must be stored on a random access device CypherText 561 The running time of the program varies with th
4. may always assume to contain some particular piece of information Whenever the user references one of the defined string names CypherText determines the current value of that piece of information and supplies that value as the value of the string For example the defined string name TOTALPAGES always contains the number of pages set so far during a particular run The value stored in TOTALPAGES may be conveniently used to set a page number on each page Many of the defined string names are used primarily for testing certain conditions The defined string name PAGELEFT contains the number of points vertically left on the current page before it will be necessary to start a new page Before beginning the setting of a table in his input text a user may embed a conditional skip command SKIPIF in his input which will test PAGELEFT to determine if there is enough room on the current page for the entire table If there is not enough room CypherText will start a new page if there is enough room the table will be set on the current page A list of the most commonly used defined string names and their functions is given in Table III Many other features of CypherText such as auto matic justification and hyphenation are not discussed here because they are available in other languages as well 4 56 The primary emphasis here has been to illustrate the extensible features of CypherText par ticularly those features which
5. much space is left on aie page vertically before it will be full PAGELINES How many lines have been set on the page currently being composed TIME Current time of day in the form HH MM 24 hour time TOTALPAGES Total number of pages set so far in this run _ CypherText 559 output However for many applications the proof copy obtained at the terminal is satisfactory enough to serve as final output for reproduction by printing or other means For these applications where limited type variety and non proportional spacing are of no concern the proof copy is the end product of the CypherText process and the last two steps postprocessing and typesetting are omitted Whether or not the proof copy is the final output proof copy is useful for checking the formatting and for catching typographical errors If errors are found or if the formatting is to be changed it is a simple matter to edit the input copy by using any of the text editing facilities of the time sharing system After the copy is edited further proofs may be output until the user is satisfied that the text is composed as desired The following example shows proof copy obtained at a model 37 teletype terminal CYPHERTEXT A DEMONSTRATION CypherText enables you to transform unformatted rough copy into finished text by embedding CypherText commands in the rough copy The CypherText commands provide for all the formatting Teui repenta of the printed
6. of digits possibly with a leading plus or minus sign and an optional embedded decimal point commandgroup commandbreakcharacter commandstring commandbreakcharacter commandstring commandelement commandelement commandelement primitivecommand 3 macrocommand stringname nullstring primitivecommand one of the commands from Table I blankstring param eterlist macrocommand macroname blankstring parameterlist stringname alphanumeriestring of length less than 64 characters beginning with a letter and which has previously appeared as the first parameter of a SET or EVALUATE command macroname alphanumericstring of length less than 64 characters beginning with a letter and which has previously appeared as the first parameter of a DEFINE command parameterlist parameterlist simpleparameter parameterlist simpleparameter nullstring simpleparameter alphanumericstring stringexpression numericexpression stringexpression stringname quotedstring amp stringexpression quotedstring alphanumericstring alphanumericstring numericexpression numericstring stringname arithmeticoperator numericexpression arithmeticoperator APPENDIX B Implementation details CypherText has been implemented for a PDP 10 time sharing system It is written entirely in assembly From the collection of the Computer History Museum www
7. simple and consistent CypherText input consists of the text to be typeset and the formatting instructions for the text The formatting instructions commands are distinguished from the text by command break characters Though the command break character may be any character the user chooses throughout this paper the slash will be used The following fragment of input shows some text and one command as shown on the following page NEXTPAGE In the above example the text as shown on the following page would be set on a particular page after which the command NEXTPAGE would cause any subsequent text to be set on the next page More than one command may be placed within the From the collection of the Computer History Museum www computerhistory org 556 Fall Joint Computer Conference 1970 break characters provided that the individual com mands are separated by semicolons as in the following example as shown on the following page NEXTPAGE CENTER Chapter VI In this example the two commands NEXTPAGE and CENTER are placed within the same set of slashes NEXTPAGE causes a skip to the next page after which CENTER causes the text Chapter VI to be centered at the top of the new page Some commands require one or more modifiers parameters to fulfill their formatting functions In these commands the parameters are separated from the name of the command by a s
8. CypherText An extensible composing and typesetting language by C G MOORE and R P MANN The Cyphernetics Corporation Ann Arbor Michigan INTRODUCTION CypherText is a programming language designed for text formatting and typesetting in a time sharing environment Text to be formatted or typeset is input on a terminal and may be output at the terminal or on various typesetting machines Although a number of computer typesetting languages have been written for particular applications such as newspaper work few of these languages are adaptable for any other application 2 3 This inflexibility has remained one of the most serious limitations of existing computer typesetting languages CypherText an extensible language overcomes this problem of inflexibility to a great extent Because CypherText is truly extensible it is possible to tailor specific formatting capabilities to meet the needs of particular typesetting applications by predefining for mats for each application Both large scale projects such as catalogs and parts lists as well as smaller operations such as job shop typesetting may now be accommodated within the scope of one language By predefining formats a set of format definitions for a specific application may be packaged so thatthe definitions come ready to use i e the user does not have to know anything about how to make up format ting definitions for himself This packaging of fo
9. differentiate it from other typesetting languages USING CYPHERTEXT Using CypherText to transform original copy into finished text is a five step process Embedding Inputting Proofing Postprocessing Typesetting er i See Embedding is the insertion of CypherText commands into the original text The commands may be written in by an editor for later inputting by a typist or in the case of experienced users the commands may be embedded extemporaneously as the text is being input The following example shows an original manuscript with the commands embedded by an editor J center PTICA BOL 12 mrurtgpe HELVETICA J CYPHERTEXT A DEMONSTRATION R Cagk spor 125 fe TIMES ROMAN 19 CypherText enables you to transform unformatted rough copy into finished text by embedding CypherText commands in the rough copy The CypherText commands provide for all the formatting requirements of the printed page including justification hyphenation tabulation leadering and runarounds From the collection of the Computer History Museum www computerhistory org In this example the commands specify that the heading is to be centered and set in 12 point Helvetica Bold while the two paragraphs are to be set in 10 point Times Roman Note that the command for starting a new paragraph has been abbreviated to After the commands have been inserted the em bedded copy is input into a general purpose time
10. e number and complexity of the commands embedded in the text For straight matter such as non technical books running time for first and second passes com bined is about 3 seconds per 1000 characters For very complicated work such as some parts catalogs run time may approach 2 seconds per 1000 characters Unless final copy is being printed at the terminal additional time will be needed on the type setting device chosen to set the text REFERENCES 1 G M BERNS Description of FORM AT a text processing language Comm of the ACM Vol 12 3 March 1969 pp 141 146 TEXT360 Introduction and reference manual Form C35 0002 IBM Technical Publications Dept White Plains N Y March 1969 Harris Composition System Language manual Harris Intertype Corp Cleveland Ohio March 1970 Textran 2 User s manual Form T2 102 3 Alphanumeric Inc Lake Success N Y 1969 5 J W SEYBOLD The market for computerized typesetting Printing Industries of America Washington D C 1969 HYPHENATIONS6O Application description Form E20 2130 IBM Technical Publications Dept White Plains N Y 1969 N Ww Aa D From the collection of the Computer History Museum www computerhistory org From the collection of the Computer History Museum www computerhistory org
11. e command occurs USE Gives the name s of one or more files whose contents are to be included as input at this point These files may include commands or text or both From the collection of the Computer History Museum www computerhistory org CypherText 557 LINES For example the command PT 15 would cause any text following the command to be set on the current page if more than 15 lines remain or to be set on the next page if less than 15 lines remain String storage The capability of assigning names to strings of characters and of storing the strings for future use is also crucial to the extensibility of CypherText Strings are assigned names and stored for retrieval by means of the SET command For example the command SET X NEXTPAGE would store the 8 character string NEXTPAGE under the name X Such stored strings may be used as commands parameters to commands or even as text to be set For example after the above command the command X is equivalent to the command NEXTPAGE Using stored strings as commands or as parameters to commands merely involves substituting the string name for the string For example the sequence SET LINE 12 SPACE LINE stores the value 12 under the name LINE so that when LINE is used as a parameter to the SPACE command a vertical spacing of 12 points is left on the page Using stored str
12. formatting parameters are in effect Commands which alter the formatting parameters may appear anywhere in the input text stream These commands are bracketed by the current command break character which is normally a slash One or more commands placed between command break characters in this manner is called a command group and must follow certain syntactical rules The syntax of a command group is given below Rigor in the formal sense has been sacrificed for readability Such sacrifices are indicated by enclosing parentheses In the definitions we use the convention that lower case character strings stand for a generic type Upper case strings and punctuation characters not mentioned in these conventions must appear as shown Square brackets surround optional material Three dots following a syntactic unit indicate that it may be repeated an arbitrary number of times The sequence is used to mean is defined as A vertical bar is used to indicate that one of the options in curly brackets should be chosen Curly brackets are also used to group syntactic units for some purpose The special generic name nullstring and blankstring stand for a string of no characters and a string of one or more blank characters respectively The generic name alpha numericstring stands for an arbitrary string of upper and lower case letters and numbers The generic name numericstring stands for a string
13. ings as text to be set involves the use of the abbreviation character Though this character may be any that the user chooses in the following example the at sign has been used Commonly used words phrases or paragraphs may be assigned string names and stored whenever the words phrases or paragraphs are to be used as text only the string name need be used preceded by the abbreviation character For example the command SET CT CypherText an extensible language would store the quoted text under the name CT Whenever the user wants to include the text Cypher Text an extensible language he has only to type in CT In this case 35 characters have been reduced to the 2 character abbreviation CT Stored strings may also be used in a way analogous to the use of variables in algebraic programming lan guages Thus stored strings may be used in an arith metic expression as a parameter to a command For example the sequence SET LINES 12 SPACE 5 LINES causes a vertical space of 5 times the number of points specified in the string named LINES to be left on the current page Reserved String Names Many of the formatting functions of CypherText are controlled by the use of reserved string names These are string names whose contents are constantly monitored by CypherText Whenever the value of one of these reserved strings is changed CypherTex
14. name to the command and indicates how the parameters are to be used ENDIF See SKIPIF EVALUATE Evaluates an arithmetic expression and stores the value in a specified string name INCLUDE Requests that the contents of some string or combination of strings be set as text at this point LEADER Requests that a leader of some particular character be used to fill out the current line of text Used mostly in tables MAP Gives a character whose occurrence is to be mapped into some string Every subsequent appearance of the mapped character will be treated as though the string of characters it is mapped into had occurred instead NEXTPAGE NEXTPARAGRAPH NEXTFIELD Cause a new page paragraph or field respectively to be started at this point OUTPUT Specifies the output device to be used for setting the text for example LINOFILM PHOTON 713 terminal etc PUSH POP Together allow the current contents of some string to be saved and then later recovered SET Assigns a new value to some string Corresponds to the use of the equal sign or replacement operator in most programming languages SKIPIF Allows commands and text to be skipped or ignored in the setting process if a specified condition is met No text will be set or commands processed until an ENDIF command is en countered SPACE Leaves a vertical space of the specified amount on the page currently being composed at the point th
15. pace and multiple parameters are separated from each other by commas For example the command SPACE requires as a modifier the amount of vertical space to be left on a page expressed in points Thus the command SPACE 24 causes a vertical spacing of 24 points Among the commands requiring multiple parameters is NEWTYPE which has as modifiers the name style and point size of the type face to be set Thus NEWTYPE TIMES ROMAN 8 would cause a switch to 8 point Times Roman as the current type face A list of the most commonly used CypherText commands and their functions is provided in Table I Command definition The capability of defining new commands is integral to the extensibility of CypherText and contributes greatly to its ease of use New commands are created by combining a number of basic commands and assigning a name to the combination The name is assigned by means of the DEFINE command In the following example a new command called PT requiring one parameter LINES has been defined The definition of the command appears between the quotation marks and consists of three basic commands SKIPIF NEXT PAGE and ENDIF DEFINE PT LINES SKIPIF lt 72 LINES 12 NEXTPAGE ENDIF Having defined the new command PT LINES it would be used by supplying a value for the parameter TABLE I Commands DEFINE Used to define a new CypherText command It gives a
16. rmats has already been accomplished for architectural specifications technical report writing and job shop typesetting applications In the first two cases the format definitions are so comprehensive that the user almost never requires any of the unextended features of the language In fact most users are unaware of the unpackaged features because the packaged definitions meet all their formatting requirements In addition to providing wide formatting flexibility CypherText also provides flexibility in choosing type setting devices on which the text is to be output Other typesetting languages have typically been geared to one 555 or a few specific typesetting machines CypherText on the other hand is device independent a post processing feature allows users to set their text on many commercially available typesetting devices including photocomposition devices hot lead devices and even typewriter like terminals with no change required in the input text The extensibility of CypherText and the flexibility it offers derive from the structure of the language and the method of its use THE STRUCTURE OF CYPHERTEXT The major structural features of CypherText are its command syntax command definition capability and string storage capability Syntax One prerequisite of an extensible typesetting lan guage is an unambiguous syntax Every effort has been made to keep the CypherText syntax
17. sharing system on virtually any terminal input device Several advantages derive from the fact that the copy is entered into a time sharing environment first the copy may be stored on any of a number of direct ac cess devices depending on factors of economy and con venience second output from other programs in the time sharing system may serve as input to CypherText and third the copy is always immediately accessible for updating The following example shows how the embedded copy would appear on a terminal during inputting center JNEVTYPE HELVETICA BOLD 12 CYPHERTEXT A DEMONSTRATION space 12 NEWTYPE TIMES ROMAN 10 TEXT CynherText enatles you to transforr unformatted rough copy Inte finished text hy embedding CypherText corrands in the rough copy The CypherText conrands provide for all the _formattine recuirements of the printed page Including justification hyerenstlon tabulation leadering ane runarounds READY After the copy has been input immediate proofs may be obtained by having the system compose and print out the text at the terminal Of course the proof copy takes on the limitations of the terminal on which it is TABLE I1I Defined Variables DATE Current data in the form DAY MONTH YEAR LINECHARACTERS Current number of characters set so far on this line PAGEDOWN How much text has been set on this page i e how far down the page text has been set PAGELEFT How
18. t takes some special action For example the reserved string variable LINELEADING indicates the amount of space to be left between each line of the final text Changing the value of this string will change the amount of space left between lines Thus the command SET LINELEADING 12 indicates that from this point on 12 points of space are to be left between each line in the output text For typewriter like terminals this command is effectively a double space command As another example the formatting of the top and bottom of each page is controlled by two reserved string names HEADER and TRAILER Any combination of commands and text may be stored in these strings Whenever Cypher Text begins a new page of text it examines the contents of these strings to determine what to place at the top and bottom of each page For example the command SET HEADER SPACE 36 CENTER INCLUDE TTEXT SPACE 36 stores in the reserved string HEADER a set of commands which will center at the top of each page the current contents of the string named TTEXT with 36 points of space between this line and the top of the page and 36 points of space between this line and the first line of text Of course the contents of the string TTEXT may be changed at any time via the SET command Thereafter each page will have the new contents of TTEXT as a centered title From the collection of the
19. the entire process a one pass operation The final step typesetting consists of running the postprocessed tape on a particular typesetting machine to obtain finished typeset copy The number of type From the collection of the Computer History Museum www computerhistory org 560 Fall Joint Computer Conference 1970 faces and sizes as well as the spacing characteristics depend of course on the typesetting machine itself The following example shows the sample text set on a Linofilm Quick CYPHERTEXT A DEMONSTRATION CypherText enables you to transform unformatted rough copy into finished text by embedding CypherText commands in the rough copy The CypherText commands provide for all the formatting requirements of the printed page including justi fication hyphenation tabulation leadering and runarounds Although CypherText can be used in any composing and typesetting application it is especially suited for text requiring frequent revision complicated or repeti tive formatting and high speed and accuracy Despite the sophisticated capabilities of the language experience has shown that both novices and trained editors alike can be taught to use CypherText easily and effectively in a broad range of composing and typesetting applications APPENDIX A SYNTAX OF THE LANGUAGE Normally CyperText operates in text mode a mode in which the characters in the input stream are simply set according to whatever current
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