Computer generation of photocomposing control tapes. Part I. Preparation of flexowriter source material

Computer programs have been written that affect several processes of use in mechanized documentation. Encoding programs convert source material punched on a Flexowriter into the code of a Photon photocomposing machine. The encoding programs provide justification, mixed letter size and style, and format control, to meet requirements that are specified by comments which appear ahead of the text, or, identified by special quote marks, within the text. Further programs are being written to produce the Photon code for built up chemical and mathematical formulae from “linearized” input, punched on a Flexowriter, and which contains names of symbols not on the keyboard, and control codes to indicate subscript and superscript positions. Page composing programs are being written to organize one or several texts into a complicated page format whose structure is described to the computer in simple terms. Paginated document programs are being written to organize lengthy texts into codes to print sequentially numbered pages. Editing programs have been written that apply editorial instructions to verbal texts which have been stored in a computer. At present these instructions can set margins, delete, delete and close, insert, replace, exchange and indent portions of the text, run on paragraphs and start new lines, paragraphs and pages, as requested. Programs are being written to organize fragmentary information, submitted in random sequence, into catalogues, directories, dictionaries, bibliographies, listings and indexes. Considerable emphasis is placed in all this work on modern automatic coding techniques, and on the use of “stylized instruction languages,” the development of which is considered to be far more important than the actual coding of the individual programs. The following paper describes the preparation of Flexowriter source material to be converted with Photon code by a digital computer.