Matt Round and Friends Bring Back the Type-In Program Listing with New Magazine DOCTYPE

Maker and artist Matt Round is looking to bring back the type-in magazine listing, a staple of computing periodicals from the 1970s and 1980s, with DOCTYPE — a collection of type-in HTML for games and apps, unavailable in any other format than print.

"[DOCTYPE is] a nicely-made magazine with a glossy color cover on the outside and ten printed listings of web pages on the inside, accompanied by illustrations and info," Round explains of the project, which includes cover art from PJ Holden and illustrations from the pseudonymous artist "HappyToast." "You type it in then you get to play the games and run the apps. Why? Because it’s a lost form of software distribution. It was intriguing and rewarding back then, maybe it still is now."

In the early days of personal and home computing, when systems typically booted into a BASIC prompt, type-in listings were a common sight in magazines of the era. With no easy route to mass distribution of free software — tapes being expensive to produce and ship, floppy disks even more so, and modems being an uncommon and expensive accessory at the time — authors would submit their program source code for reproduction in print, and users would type them out line-by-line before saving and running them on their own computers.

Although frustrations were common — errors in the original code, typographical errors in print, and entry errors by the reader would often mean lengthy debugging sessions, especially for programs that made use of inscrutable "DATA" blocks for embedded assembly code or custom graphics — many, including Round and friends, remember such things fondly. Enough so, in fact, that they're launching a type-in magazine of their own.

The inaugural issue of DOCTYPE features ten listings, but they're not in BASIC; instead they're in HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the code underpinning the World Wide Web. Typed in and saved to an HTML file, they execute in-browser — and range from games like an Asteroids clone dubbed Meteors to puzzles and even simple utilities. Listings are contributed by developers and artists Óscar Toledo G., Terence Eden, Stuart Langridge, Max Goodhart, Louis Barclay, "JimmerUK," Rico Monkeon, Matt Sephton, Dave "Bagpuss Forsey, and Round himself — and all are available exclusive between the magazine's glossy covers in print form.

More information is available on Round's website; the 32-page magazine itself is available via print-on-demand service Lulu at $9.99.