vax-code to pico

This archive contains the source from the original
VAX version of the pico image editor, in pre-ansi c.
Nobody has really looked at this in about 15 years,
and there's no attempt made here to reconstruct
documentation for this code.
Most of the code was written in January 1984, with
smaller additions later in 84 and in 85, but not
much beyond.
It contains a little on-the-fly compiler for pico
code (gen.c), written by Ken Thompson and Rob Pike,
that made pico go fast on the comparatively slow
hardware we had back then (a VAX-750 connected
to a metheus framebuffer).
There is some support for other types of framebuffers
as well, but really quite minimal.
Clearly, this code will not run on any modern system,
it may not even compile, but the source to the on-the-fly
compiler is perhaps worth looking at.

I've included the textfiles for some of the papers
written in pico. There's of course also the book,
that talks about the source for a more portable, and
slower, version of the editor (popi - portable pico).

Gerard Holzmann,
Bell Labs, Murray Hill, October 25, 2001.
