Ties to the literature.

diff --git a/doc/mad-manual.xml b/doc/mad-manual.xml
index 798b0b755efb587028f35602e5b40172d4cbd298..50efb05273f3a43521c1b412eb0855720f70d218 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/mad-manual.xml
+++ b/doc/mad-manual.xml
@@ -35,11 +35,11 @@ reconstructive archeology, so that language connoisseurs of the
 present and future will be able to appreciate what computing life was
 like back in that day.</para>
 
-<para>MAD was an extended dialect of ALGOL 58, designed near the
-beginning of the great age of invention in compiled languages that
-stretched from FORTRAN in 1955 until the rise to dominance of C after
-1985.  Study of it teaches a great deal about the uses and background
-assumptions of computing in 1962 and earlier.</para>
+<para>MAD was an extended dialect of ALGOL 58, first released in 1959
+near the beginning of the great age of invention in compiled languages
+that stretched from FORTRAN in 1955 until the rise to dominance of C
+after 1985.  Study of it teaches a great deal about the uses and
+background assumptions of computing in 1962 and earlier.</para>
 
 <para>Some features of MAD are only superficially odd.  The all-caps 
 listings look strange to modern eyes; the IBM 704 on which it was
@@ -111,6 +111,20 @@ illustrates, MAD even supported what was later called
 <quote>higher-order programming</quote> &mdash; passing around
 function-valued variables!</para>
 
+<para>Also, MAD took care of details of running a job in ways that few
+other languages of the time could do. MAD was what came to be called a
+"load-and-go" compiler; unlike other languages of the period in which
+jobs had to be launched by the operator after the card deck had been
+loaded, the MAD system would ship either a diagnostic listing or
+program output to the line printer immediately after the deck
+compiled.  This fast turnaround was essential for a teaching
+environment.  MAD also featured good diagnostics to help students find
+and correct errors.  MAD's combination of a compiler with the simple
+supervisor program that enabled load-and-go operation was considered
+quite cutting-edge at the time and inspired a paper in the very first
+issue of ACM Computing Surverys (<citetitle>Supervisory and Monitor
+System</citetitle>, R.F. Rosin, March 1969).</para>
+
 <para>On the other hand, there are some features of MAD which make one
 truly wonder what the designers were thinking &mdash; the handling of
 array indexing, for example, with two different addressing systems one