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Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF'
From: |
Bernd Warken |
Subject: |
Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF' |
Date: |
Wed, 8 May 2013 18:07:21 +0200 (CEST) |
> Von: "Doug McIlroy" <address@hidden>
>
> Thanks for the link info. I thought I knew just about all there
> was to know about RUNOFF, but learned from the man page that it
> had a much longer life than I was aware of.
>
> I'm pretty sure that the reason for all the arrangements for
> upper-case representation was the input devices, not the
> printers. By the time I used RUNOFF (1965) the preferred
> input device was an IBM Selectric, hence the mention of
> print balls, which were unique to that device. But CTSS
> began with model 33 teletypes, which had upper case only.
> I believe that IBM's train (or chain?) printers with a
> full complement of characters had displaced the old tabulator
> printers by 1963. Upper-case input was also necessary if you
> happened to be stuck with punched cards; that motivation
> though was more pertinent to my roff at Bell Labs than to
> Saltzer's Runoff at MIT.
>
> I noticed one occurrence of CTTS in the man page.
Thank you for your interest.
`mom' is much like `RUNOFF'. So `RUNOFF' is not dead. The 2-letter
abbreviations of classical `roff' make the `roff' files unreadable.
`RUNOFF' control words are much better.
I sent a former version of my `RUNOFF' man-page to Saltzer. He
agreed to the information there. At that time, I called the man-page
`RUNOFF.man'. Unfortunately the Unix man-pages were only written
in lower case. So I renamed it to `runoff.7'.
But in Linux, there are some man-page files that are capitalized.
I would prefer the man-page name `RUNOFF.7', because the original
`RUNOFF' system was always written in upper case. Any complaints?
Actually I found additional information. A document of 1974 is the
best documentation so far, especially for the upper case text files.
I will append that to the man-page `runoff.7'.
The `RUNOFF' project started at CTTS. More hardware information will
appended later on. I also found a CTTS emulator, which seems to be
quite interesting. It was written by a friend of Saltzer. But I did
not check it so far.
Moreover the files related to `RUNOFF' in my github archive have to be
expanded.
Bernd
- [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF', Bernd Warken, 2013/05/05
- Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF', Doug McIlroy, 2013/05/06
- Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF', Ted Harding, 2013/05/06
- Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF', Bernd Warken, 2013/05/06
- Message not available
- Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF',
Bernd Warken <=
- Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF', Ralph Corderoy, 2013/05/08
- Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF', Ralph Corderoy, 2013/05/08
- Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF', Werner LEMBERG, 2013/05/08
- Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF', Bernd Warken, 2013/05/08
- Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF', Peter Schaffter, 2013/05/09