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Draft v5: London and Reiser's UNIX VAX port paper, reconstructed

by G. Branden Robinson

Hi folks, A few months ago I reported on my efforts to reconstruct London & Reiser's paper on their port of Unix to the VAX-11/780.[1] I formerly characterized this as "the UNIX/32V port", but since London & Reiser's paper predates the release of Seventh Edition Unix by about six months, UNIX/32V came _after_ Seventh Edition by about the same number of months, and the pace of Unix development was particularly ferocious in this period[2], I felt that my identification of London & Reiser's work with UNIX/32V may have been hasty. I also may have overinterpreted Dennis Ritchie's words on the subject. "Tom London and John Reiser, working from the 7th Edition and the Interdata 8/32 system, generated a VAX 11/780 version of the system, which, in its distribution format, would be called 32V." That phrase "in its distribution format" could cover a variety of changes, some of which perhaps did not match London & Reiser's intentions or views expressed in their paper. More conservative implications seemed prudent. I'd thus like to present what I consider to be my "final" draft, subject of course to feedback from these mailing lists. I'm pleased to report that I've addressed all of the XXX points I identified in the source of my first draft, points where I felt groff mm could be enhanced to aid the rendering of historical documents like this. I consequently expect groff 1.24's mm package to support several new features prompted specifically by this work. Quoting the forthcoming NEWS file... * The m (mm) macro package now supports a user-definable hook macro `AFX`, which if defined is called by `AF` in lieu of the latter's normal operation. Applications include customization of letterhead. * The m (mm) macro package now supports a user-definable hook macro `RPX`, which if defined is called by `RP` to format the reference list caption string `Rp` instead of the default formatting. * The m (mm) macro package now supports an `Aumt` string to suppress the appearance of positional arguments to the `AU` macro in the document heading used by memorandum types 0-3 and 6. By default, all such arguments appear, except the second (author initials). For example, a value of "3 4" more accurately reproduces London & Reiser's 1978 paper describing the porting of Unix to the VAX-11/780. * The m (mm) macro package now supports an `Rpfmt` string specifying the `LB` macro arguments that the package uses to format the items in a reference list. * The m (mm) macro package no longer superscripts _and_ brackets a reference mark (the `Rf` string). Instead, the new `Rfstyle` register controls its formatting. The default, 0, selects bracketing in nroff mode and superscripting in troff mode. Set `Rfstyle` to 3 in a document to obtain groff mm's previous mark formatting behavior. [I might still update or revert the changed default; I want to research the behavior of historical mm implementations.] The "32vscan.pdf" document from which I prepared this reconstruction is available at Dennis Ritchie's memorial home page.[3] I have attached the reconstructed mm source document and two PDFs, rendered with groff 1.23.0 (the current stable release), and groff Git HEAD (exercising the new features listed above).[4] I offer the caveat that these cannot be pixel-perfect recreations because (1) I have no information about the precise paper dimensions or margins London & Reiser used[5]; (2) the fonts employed in rendering the documents are not identical, metrically or otherwise; and (3) AT&T and GNU troffs use different hyphenation systems and therefore sometimes break words differently. These factors all impact the placement of line and page breaks, and these are avowedly and clearly distinguishable. There are furthermore a few discrepancies that I decided weren't worth the trouble at this time to reconcile, like selective encroachment of cover sheet material beyond the page margins. None affect the utility of the document (in my opinion). With that large disclaimer in place, I welcome feedback on the quality of the reproduction. Finally, I reiterate my encouragement that the document be _read_. In my opinion, the final two sections "Commands" and "Software portability" are well worth consideration in hindsight. To the extent that we continue to boast, sometimes glibly, of C as a "portable assembly language", be it in its current ISO C23 incarnation; as ANSI C89, the last revision blessed by Ritchie; or in the form used when London and Reiser wrote, their experiences and recommendations laid out a program of better delivering on that promise. Regards, Branden [1] https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2024-June/030041.html [2] 1980, for example, saw releases of 3BSD, System III, PWB/UNIX 2.0, and 4BSD. [3] https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/portpapers.html [4] You may notice a difference in the sizes of the two PDFs, surprising in light of their shared source document. This is thanks to a new feature forthcoming in Deri James's gropdf(1) output driver: font subsetting. [5] ...or where, if anywhere, the authors "cheated" the margins temporarily, for instance with `ll` or `pl` requests. Even with mm macro package sources available, such things would be invisible to the reconstructor.

10 months, 1 week

Old troff files (1988-2007)

by Jacobson, Doug W [E CPE]

Folks: Long story short, I have a unpublished manuscript that a faculty member in my department wrote late 1980's early 2000's. He did the entire thing in troff, eqn, and pic. The faculty member is still alive. A publisher is interested in the manuscript. I have all of the source files on an old unix machine that still has troff, eqn and pic. It also has groff. This issue is that the pic commands are bracketed by .G1 and .G2 not .PS & .PE. The original machine he would have used would have ran AT&T Sys V on an AT&T 3B20. Below is one of the files. Any thoughts on the .G1 .G2? I can get the files that have only eqn and troff to create postscript, but the .G1/.G2 is not understood by pic. I tried replacing the .G1/.G2 with .PS/PE and it failed. I must be missing another program that uses the .G1/2 Thanks .sp -3.5 .fp 1 Z .fp 2 XI .ps 11 .tl ' ' '1-10' .EQ delim $$ gsize 11 .EN .po 0.9i .vs 15 .G1 frame wid 5.7 ht 6.0 invis coord x 0.2, 100 y -40, +22 log x grid left from -30 to +20 by 10 "" grid left from -40.04 to +19.96 by 10 "" grid left from -39.96 to +20.04 by 10 "" grid left from -39 to +22 by 1 "" grid bot from 0.4 to 40 by *10 "" grid bot from 1 to 100 by *10 "" grid bot from 0.2 to 20 by *10 "" grid bot from 0.3 to 30 by *10 "" grid bot from 0.5 to 50 by *10 "" grid bot from 0.6 to 60 by *10 "" grid bot from 0.7 to 70 by *10 "" grid bot from 0.8 to 80 by *10 "" grid bot from 0.9 to 90 by *10 "" ticks out left from -40 to +20 by 10 ticks out bot from 0.2 to 20 by *10 ticks out bot from 0.4 to 40 by *10 ticks out bot from 1 to 100 by *10 draw solid 0.2 19.93 2 19.93 10 5.97 100 -34.02 new solid 0.2 20.07 2 20.07 10 6.05 100 -33.95 new dotted for i=0.45 to 23 by *1.05 do { w=i*i f=200/sqrt(w*w+104*w+400) next at i,20*log(f) } label left "\u\udB \d\d" label bot "\(*w, rad/s" .G2 .in 2 Fig. 1.4. Graph of the magnitude in dB of $H(s)~=~200 over{s sup 2~+~12^s~+~20}^,$$~s~=~j^omega$. Doug Jacobson University Professor, Dept. Electrical & Computer Engineering Sunil & Sujata Gaitonde Professorship in Cybersecurity Director: ISU Center for Cybersecurity Innovation and Outreach Mail Address: 2520 Osborn Dr, 2215 Coover Hall Iowa State University PH: (515) 294-8307 Fax (515) 294-8432 Office: 371 Durham Hall Center web site: http://www.cyio.iastate.edu/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.cyio.iastate.edu/__;!!DZ3fjg!oVZir7OL…> Personal web site: http://www.dougj.net<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.dougj.net/__;!!DZ3fjg!oVZir7OL4VMZHCY…>

10 months, 1 week

Re: lilian schwartz has died

by Douglas McIlroy

> lilian worked at bell labs in the 80s (and maybe 90s) > around tech and films and suchlike. Lillian was a real pioneer. She began collaborating at the Labs in the mid 1960s. Doug

10 months, 2 weeks

lilian schwartz has died

by andrew＠humeweb.com

lilian worked at bell labs in the 80s (and maybe 90s) around tech and films and suchlike.

10 months, 2 weeks

by arnold＠skeeve.com

Hi All. I'm working on revising my book on basic *nix programming, and for the new chapter on sockets, I want to include some code from 4.2 BSD. Is there a copyright file somewhere for that code? I'm sure it's copyright the Regents of the University of California, but I'd like to include the text of the copyright in the book, so that everything's clear. Thanks! Arnold

10 months, 2 weeks

V8 and V9 manual covers

by Aharon Robbins

Hello All, I took a picture of my V8 and V9 manuals the other day. It's available at https://www.skeeve.com/V8-V9-Covers.jpg. @segaloco: This one's for you. :-) Enjoy, Arnold

10 months, 2 weeks

Re: BTL Involvement in Publication Imagery?

by Douglas McIlroy

Unix folk were barely involved in the branding or advertising of the system. I recall that we got to proofread and edit the first Unix ad, but essentially nothing later. Nor did we contribute to the cover designs of the 7th edition trade verson or the 8th-10th in-house versions of the manual. Doug

10 months, 2 weeks

BTL Involvement in Publication Imagery?

by segaloco

So in the course of AT&T's involvement with UNIX, a number of different images and motifs have graced advertisements and covers of literature, among them: - Letter Blocks (V7 HRW manuals, Release 4.0 Starter Packages) - Criss-crossing grid lines on a black background (Release 5.0/SVR1) - Variations on an image of earth with UNIX superimposed (SVR3/SVR4) - Covers mirroring publication motifs of other AT&T products and literature (SVR2/SVR3) Did the folks actually involved in the production of UNIX have any influence on the choice of design motifs for such materials, or would those sorts of decisions have been largely in the hands of marketing folks several layers removed from the Labs? My understanding is that this sort of visual branding started in the early 80s, with the earliest example of a printed piece of UNIX literature outside of generic Bell Laboratories covers I'm aware of being the "Starter Package" documents featuring UNIX spelled out on four letter blocks in primary colors. Everything I've seen branded predating these 1981 publications is either 8.5/11 pages in a Bell Labs or Western Electric report cover or the form factor of the Release 3.0 manual using generic Bell Labs covers. I'm certainly intrigued if anyone has any recollection of any sort of visual motifs in play prior to 1981. - Matt G.

10 months, 2 weeks

Re: groff_man.7.man.in: Some remarks and editorial changes for this man page

by Douglas McIlroy

The titled post reminds me of Ted Dolotta, a guru of PWB Unix, whose eye for editorial detail was unsurpassed. He could spot the difference between italic and roman periods at twenty paces. Bjarni is in good company. Doug

10 months, 3 weeks

Re: Minimum Array Sizes in 16 bit C (was Maximum)

by Douglas McIlroy

> C's refusal to specify dynamic memory allocation in the language runtime > (as opposed to, eventually, the standard library) This complaint overlooks one tenet of C: every operation in what you call "language runtime" takes O(1) time. Dynamic memory allocation is not such an operation. Your hobbyhorse awakened one of mine. malloc was in v7, before the C standard was written. The standard spinelessly buckled to allow malloc(0) to return 0, as some implementations gratuitously did. I can't imagine that any program ever actually wanted the feature. Now it's one more undefined behavior that lurks in thousands of programs. There are two arguments for malloc(0), Most importantly, it caters for a limiting case for aggregates generated at runtime--an instance of Kernighan's Law, "Do nothing gracefully". It also provides a way to create a distinctive pointer to impart some meta-information, e.g. "TBD" or "end of subgroup", distinct from the null pointer, which merely denotes absence. Doug

10 months, 3 weeks

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