Re: [Groff] New project: `RUNOFF'

[Bernd Warken]

> 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