Mark Knowles wrote:...
I would be inclined to use the term "automatic" when it is the result of a clearly designed rule set and can be implemented by an algorithm and potentially implemented by a computer. I use the term "manual" when talking about text produced by a person as a result of a mixture of conscious, semi-conscious and unconscious processes. This way of producing text is very hard to convert to an algorithm.
If you feel the VMS may have been more ad hoc, rather than (for example) rule-based, you should take a look at some of the examples that were submitted to Marco when he asked volunteers to create some pages of meaningless text. Meaningless text would qualify as "filler" text.
They are quite varied and there are none that resemble VMS text:
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