

Show HN: Avremu – An 8-Bit Microcontroller in Pure LaTeX - stettberger
https://gitlab.brokenpipe.de/stettberger/avremu/tree/master

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userbinator
That reminds me of this, a slightly bigger AVR emulating an ARM SoC running
Linux:

[http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.+Linux+on+8...](http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.+Linux+on+8bit)

Emulate _that_ system instead, and now you can theoretically boot a Linux
system inside of TeX.

~~~
stettberger
I already considered that, but until now i did not implement many peripheral
devices. But when implemented those, it should be possible. But at the moment
i'm rather thinking of an VHDL netlist emulator in TeX.

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apricot
In the 1990s, when I was in college, I wrote a 6502 emulator in a text editor
macro language (the text editor was QEdit, a DOS editor that was popular at
the time). It was completely useless but a lot of fun.

There was a very low hard limit on the number of jumps (32, if I recall
correctly) that complicated things. I eventually had to resort to a two step
process, first translating 6502 code to a simpler virtual machine (using and
abusing the find-and-replace command), and then executing that simpler code.

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msarnoff
I wonder if this could be modified to control actual hardware? It looks the
`\write18` command can be used to execute shell commands if LaTeX is run with
the `--shell-escape` option. So in theory you could intercept all writes to
the GPIO control registers and use a shell command to send bytes over the
serial port to a physical MCU (or something like the SparkFun SPI Shortcut.)

Imagine a LaTeX document that, when processed, reads a series of measurements
from a sensor over the serial port, then renders nice graphs directly to a
PDF! :)

~~~
MechSkep
I was looking for this workflow for my research, and ended up going with an
ipython notebook.

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SeanLuke
To be pedantic: this code is largely in TeX, not LaTeX.

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stettberger
This is true, but largly in TeX and only Parts of it in LaTeX is still LaTeX.
But you're right, I did use only a few rudimentary features.

~~~
SeanLuke
I think this is the minority view of LaTeX: it's built on top of and is a
subset of TeX, not a superset. No one would ever consider \def to be LaTeX for
example.

Not to denigrate what you produced of course.

~~~
RBerenguel
I've always thought of LaTeX as more of a superset, but I see where you are
coming at (I've read the TeXbook)

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Extigy
This is mental and I love it.

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grundprinzip
Nice work, though I liked the dataref package even more!

~~~
stettberger
The dataref package is intended to be useful (and it acutally is). Avremu was
only a long trip in sweden without internet, an editor and a reference manual.

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f137
We need more of this.

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dsugarman
this is cool and you seem obviously intelligent, have you considered making
something people want?

~~~
marvy
sometimes, cool is enough :) I might actually want this though. C is much more
convenient than TeX to code in, and yet sometimes you have no choice. Until
now.

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xg15
why?

~~~
stettberger
Sweden, Too much time, Masterthesis was submitted.

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adhambadr
"Are you insane? Not that anybody knows of."

hahaha that cracked me up, especially that i actually considered the
possibility when i read the title.

