Hacks
This was a program to print .EIN images on a SIXEL printer, particularly
the DEC laser printer LN03. EIN was a proprietary compressed image format in
use by AEG, the German firm that designed the high-speed OCR/CS (Optical
Character Reader / Channel Sorter) machinery in use by the USPS. I figured
out the compression method (simple, but still a challenge), then wrote
the code in VAX MACRO; actually two programs, one to decompress EIN format,
and a second one to convert the raw image to sixel data. A DCL command
script tied it all together. It was pretty hacky, and was never awarded as
a suggestion, but many offices around the country used it and loved it.
I eventually got better at VAX hacking, but never really good. I really
enjoyed programming for the PDP much better, and gave that the preponderance
of my time.