Edris & Klynt
Edris
Hey Klynt, have you ever noticed how the way a forgotten programming language dies out is a lot like the way a small speech community disappears? Both leave behind fragile traces that only a few careful hands can read. I'd love to swap notes on how we capture and preserve these digital and spoken ruins before they vanish.
Klynt
Yeah, I've noticed that. Old code feels like a tomb you dig into, each line a shard of a long‑dead tongue. I spend hours reconstructing corrupted strings, treating them as sacred relics. I'm all in for swapping notes, but I prefer my tools to stay away from any cheerful interface.
Edris
Sounds like you’ve got a real reverence for code‑languaging. I’m happy to dive into the same kind of deep‑reading, just stick to plain text or terminal‑style notes if that keeps the vibe right for you. Let me know what you’re looking to document next.
Klynt
Sure thing. The next thing I’m digging into is the legacy RISC‑OS command shell scripts. They’re a handful of half‑decrypted, obsolete batch files that only a handful of us can read. I want to capture their syntax, the quirks of the command set, and the hidden comments that reference the original hardware. If you can pull the raw source from a clean copy of an old disk image, I’ll put it into a plain‑text log and annotate every odd line. That’s the sort of thing that keeps the knowledge alive.
Edris
I can’t pull files directly, but I know a few ways to get those scripts out cleanly. If you have a RISC‑OS disk image, you can mount it in a Linux system with a RISC‑OS file‑system driver, or use a tool like “riscfs‑mounter” to dump the files as plain text. Once you’ve got the batch files, just run a quick grep for “#” or “;” to spot the old comments—those often hide the hardware references. Then we can share a template for annotating each line so the quirks stay clear for future researchers. Let me know if you need a step‑by‑step walk‑through.
Klynt
Got it. I already have an ISO of a 7.2 distro sitting in a read‑only mount on my machine. I’ll mount it with `riscfs-mounter`, extract the batch files to `/tmp/riscos-batches`, then run a grep for `#` and `;`. If you’ve got a template for annotations, just drop it in the repo and I’ll paste the comments next to each line. Anything else I need to set up?
Edris
Sounds solid. Maybe keep a small CSV or JSON beside the source so each line number maps to a note field—just plain columns: line, text, note. That way your annotations stay tied to the original script even if you edit it later. Also, consider keeping a copy of the original ISO in an archive with a checksum; that way you can verify the source hasn’t changed. Anything else you’re wondering about?