🚀 go-pugleaf

dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann) writes:


>I am interested in a language called `TRAC'.  Unfortunately, the only language
>referece I have is a photocopy out of a textbook with no title, author, or
>bibliography.  There is a footnote that says "TRAC is [...] being maintained
>by the Rockford Research Institute Inc., Cambridge, Mass."

>If someone knows of relevent articles or ftp sites, I'd be obliged if you could
>pass them on.

The textbook is probably Peter Wegner's "Programming Languages, Information
Structures, and Machine Organization", McGraw Hill, 1968.

TRAC is the brainchild of Calvin Mooers, who was active in the early days
of the PC. I haven't heard anything about him in years. He was noted for
espousing an unusually strict view of copyrights as applied to programs.
I suspect that he is dead and with him the Rockford Research Institute, but
this is pure speculation on my part.

There is a TRAC spec, published by the Rockford Research Institute in 1972.
I have seen a copy.

Some other sources of information are Ted Nelson's "Dream Machines", which
was republished by the Microsoft Press a few years ago. This is not a
particularly good reference, but it is something.

There is a version of Emacs for DOS machines called "Freemacs". Freemacs
uses a built-in programming language called Mint in much the same way
that Gnu Emacs uses a variant of Lisp. Mint IMHO is very similar to TRAC.
The Freemacs documentation includes a reasonably complete description of 
the language.  I know that Freemacs, until recently at least, could be 
found on an archive server at Clarkson. Getting a copy of Freemacs may be
your best bet.

Fred