Digital Texts / Digital Codes

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Digital Texts / Digital Codes
Primitive Machine-Level Codes That Talk Directly to the
Micro-Processor:

<a href="http://ozark.hendrix.edu/~burch/socs/hymn/doc/SimHYMNMachineCodeProgram.html">
Machine Code</a>: the first-generation programming language that talks to the
machine directly in binary hexadecimal code (1950s, then addressed by assembler
codes)

<a href="http://www.emu8086.com/dr/asm2html/assembler_source_code/0_sample_vga_graphics.asm.html">
Assembler Code:</a> the second-generation programming language that is
interpreted by the machine code to address the machine directly, a set of
mnemonic  abbreviations learned by programmers so that they did not have to
write in machine code.  The example contains lines beginning with a
semi-colon followed by English language text--the semi-colon warns the computer
to ignore the line because it contains instructions for the human programmers
who have to maintain the program, otherwise the program would "crash" (fail to
execute its instructions).
Higher Text Programming Codes That Tell the Micro-Processor How to Store,
Display, and Print Text:
<a href="http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/comp/docs/ascii/">ASCII Code:</a> 
Created for <a href="http://www.rtty.com/CODECARD/codcrd01.jpg">Teletype
machines</a> that repeated typed news stories from a central location to
newsrooms around the world, ASCII characters told these "slave" electronic
typewriters what to type, as well as when to indent, skip a line, or ring a bell
to signal an important news story. 
<a href="http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=2205">(United Press International
[UPI] rated stories by their bell count: "Bulletin" or "Urgent" stories got five
bells; the Kennedy assassination and FDR's death were "Flash" stories, fifteen
bells.)</a>  ASCII, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange,
was devised in 1960-63 by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) based
on well-established teletype codes that had been working since the 1950s.  
Because computers can only perform mathematical operations like addition,
subtraction, etc., or logical operations that can be represented mathematically
(Boolean AND/OR/NOT sorting), all text you see on a computer screen first was a
number in machine code which referred to a character in a font table that was,
itself, represented by numbers telling the computer what shape to draw on the
screen and where to put it.  A capital "A," for instance, is
"01000001,"
and a small "a" is 01100001 
When you tell MS-Word to save a file as "Text Only," you are saving only the ASCII
characters without other formatting.
<a href="Waterloo_Script_Sample.htm">Waterloo Script </a> A pre-WYSISYG
(What-You-See[on the screen]-Is-What-You-Get[when you print the document]) word
processing system for mainframe computers.   The user had to master at
least a basic set of Script mnemonic codes in order to get the document to print
out legibly, and those codes would only be activated when the document was sent
("spooled") to the mainframe computer's line printer, a single high-speed device
that served the entire community's printing needs.  Printing delays often
were measured in hours.  Script reversed the
"comment" convention (see Assembler above) so that when the machine saw a
period, later a colon, in the left margin, it would assume it was reading a
machine instruction code (e.g., ".pp;" for paragraph) and anything following the
semi-colon or on  a line that does not begin with a period was treated as
plain text.  In time, Script became the basis for GML or Generalized Markup
Language, the ancestor of HTML (below) and XML  GML instructions started
with a colon in the left margin to distinguish them from Script instructions,
but otherwise their logic was very similar to Script's. 
<a href="http://www.uga.edu/~ucns/stddocs/script-gmlref-tso.txt">Click here for
the 1988 student users manual</a> that you would have to read and understand to
get a mainframe computer to store and print your manuscript using GML
instructions.
<a href="digital_texts__digital_codes_HMTL_Visible.htm">HTML</a> 
Hyper-Text Markup Language, a
descendant of Waterloo Script via "SGML" (Standardized Generalized Markup Language), the first
attempt to standardize all digital document formatting, HTML is the standard
language used to create web pages.  If you go to your browser window and
click on the "View" menu at the top, then click on "View Source," you will see
the source code behind the text that is displayed in WYSIWYG on your screen and
your printout.  All of that ordinarily remains invisible to the digital
text reader, even as the type compositor's assembly of a string of lead type
units on a composing stick or the printer's pulling the tympan down upon the
paper and plate is invisible to the reader of a printed book, or the scribe's
individual pen strokes and preparation of a calf skin to become parchment for
writing is invisible to the reader of a manuscript.  Early versions of
MS-Word would show users its markup codes, as well, but this word
processing program has been WYSIWYG so long that this is no longer
considered by Microsoft to be necessary for ordinary users of the program.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:XML.svg">XML  Extensible
Markup Language</a> (ca. 1998), the current descendant of SGML and Script, this
is the newest standard digital code for creating Web based documents and other
artifacts, including those which contain video and audio.  XML "tags" look
very like those of HTML, but they are language-independent (e.g., non-Roman
characters) and they can interrelate information of the same type in many
documents.
<a href="marc_code_example_for_bede.htm">MARC</a> (a specialized code for running library catalogs):
You can see the MARC code for any OLLI search result by clicking on the "MARC
Display" on the top menu buttons.  Cataloging librarians tend to find he
MARC view easier to read, because it's the form of document they write!

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