the essay that was printed in the zines is here. some sort of errata is a future possibility. so: what do you think about the text?

this blog documented the print “soapbox”; project, warts and all. poke around. the code should work. there are still a few zines left, in case you want one. they look like this.

it’s the gist of the code that i used to print the zines. it’s how the groff sources that generate the typesetting were generated. how generative is that?

its input files may have a little groff mark-up. how `little’ or how much is precisely specified around line 47. this was the original (!) code.

i like the mark-up that comes out of the other end. here’s a sample. i know that it sounds cheesy to say it, but the code has been… ciphered. this is a `hell wrld’ for that:

\h'3M'h\h'-3M'\h'4M'e\h'-4M'\h'18M'l\h'-18M'\h'7M'l\h'-7M'
\h'11M' \h'-11M'
\h'3M'w\h'-3M'\h'8M'r\h'-8M'\h'12M'l\h'-12M'\h'4M'd\h'-4M'

and here are a few pdf’s that show what the code did, does.

one detail that’s important is names of fonts. in groff, when using a font that is not default, the user picks a name for it. this is significant because those names have to be hardcoded into the groff sources when switching fonts. this means that unless there’s some sort previous agreement, groff code is not portable between users.

for anyone who would want to take a look at my code, the footnote is that i’m for the most part only using notcourier-sans, and that `NOTCOURIER’ is the name that i chose for it. that said, my code should be portable if groff and perl are there, as it is by default in the gnu-linux thing, operating system, platform, stuff, setup. or should be

in any case, the use of nondefault fonts in groff is explained here. i rewrote part of that recipe and added the fontforge spice. as the font/devps path came up when thinking about custom paper sizes, i added an addendum as here. these are notes to myself.

that day in school the idea was to stir up some some discussion on what code re-enactment could be. in general i think that the script could be used in discussions in general. more in the manual.txt file.

h (thanks!) took some pictures.
some sample pages.

it wasn’t easy. however, beyond my cynicism i did enjoy writing code that edits that essay once again. i’ve spent a lot of time this year revising that essay:

open TEMP, "> temp.txt";
open SECTION, "< $aSection";
open HEADER, "< header.groff";
[...]
        if ($. == 1) {
             while (
) {
                 print TEMP $_;
             }
        }
[…]
rename “temp.txt”, $aSection;

i have an affinity for paranoia. it may be an artistic practice. paranoia may lead to disinformation. disinformation and confusion may be tools. the stuff regarding 9/11 that he mentions was actually orchestrated by a cadre of digital tree-huggers as a countermeasure. his arguments can easily be morphed into dialing the police because the self-mediating neighbours are too loud. the paranoia can also turn into insomnia, and in some nights i wasn’t able to sleep thinking that they were being used to close down some sort of poetic medium in some place somewhere.

in more delicate situations, paranoia is just common sense. sometimes it may be better to fall prey to its apparent paralysis and disappear. hopefully disappearance is still possible.

* edit: this is all very fuzzy. what’s the algebra of fonts in groff? if one can add fonts, can one divide them? all i can do is stare at their names. the name i chose for inconsolata is IOOAA. maybe i will add notcourier again, and call it UNCOURIER. this would get reflected in the groff sources. this could confuse any potential maintainers, including myself. what’s the point of calling them sources, anyway?

“the essay deals with two things: code, and self-publishing. regarding self-publishing, the focus is on zine culture of the 1980s and 1990s. if the enormous energy of print matter of those years was an afterthought of consumer computing, how does this energy segue back into technology? the essay is the text that’s printed on the laserjet zine. the zine has been designed with custom tools. in this sense, both the code and the text of the zine have been written at the command line. in this sense, the zine is being printed from scratch. the code is freely available, but has not been thoroughly tested. it may only run on my machine. on a good day, it may run on the machines of the monad, too. speaking of, do you have any code to share? do you have any bugs to report?”