Computer editing of verbal texts. Part I. The ESI system
Michael P. Barnett, K. L. Kelley · American Documentation · 1963
Abstract A program has been written that enables the IBM 709 computer to read the representation of a text that has been punched on a Flexowriter tape, to read the corresponding representation of a list of changes that are to be made in this text, and then to produce mechanically the representation of the altered text on a further Flexowriter tape from which the altered text may be typed mechanically. The changes (or ‘editing instructions’) are expressed in a stylized instruction language; that is, they have the form of English sentences that can be understood without any knowledge of coding conventions. These sentences are analyzed within the computer by a syntactic analysis subroutine which uses the “local syntax” that has been specified for the editing instructions as data.