Title: RE: Pre-XySince this group seems to be made up, damn near exclusively, of ex (and current ?) journalists, I'm wondering if anybody is familiar with the machine I cut my teeth on. In 1987 I got a job doing paste-up, operating a stat camera, and processing galleys produced by thirty technical editors using standard typesetting language on a Hastech mainframe. I had never actually touched a computer up until this time (although I had watched over my brother-in-law's shoulder a couple of times as he wrote screenplays on a Commodore...64? You could only see half a page wide at once...horrible!). I had to use one of the Hastech terminals to send articles to the typesetting machine and, often having large blocks of free time throughout the day, I managed after five years to become an expert on the system. I sure loved that machine. The terminal keyboard was designed exclusively for writing, and you could control the smallest aspects of type production (I once re-created a traffic ticket form, to see if I could do it - a very difficult job...and dangerous when used in practical jokes. I'm sure I could have gotten in soooo much trouble). I still miss it. But what I eventually discovered was that the particular operating system we used (Crossfield) was designed for newspaper production. I'm curious whether anybody else has worked on one of these monsters...and whether they liked it (or not).
Brian Henderson
Print Composition Dept.
Mitchell Repair Information Co.
San Diego, CA