11 May
2022
11 May
'22
11:47 p.m.
The main FJCC 1964 papar, by Vyssotsky, Corbato, and Graham, spelled
Multics with an initial cap. By contrast, Ken transcribed the aural
pun as UNIX. The lawyers did their best to keep it that way after most
of us had decided it looks better as a proper noun.
As I recall, there was an acronymic reading of Multics, but it wasn't
taken seriously enough to drag the word into all caps. Nobody proposed
an acronymic reading of UNIX. So both words defy the convention of
rendering acronyms in upper-case.
Doug
12 May
12 May
12:34 a.m.
New subject: Capitalization question: UNIX/Unix and MULTICS/Multics?
Thank you, Doug.
I wrote to Brian, who responded very quickly, suggesting that he was likely
mistaken. He's going to make a note in the errata for his memoir.
Tom Van Vleck also wrote saying that he was unaware of there ever being an
acronymic rendering, and that he recalled an early meeting in which Jerry
Saltzer was quite adamant that Multics was a proper noun, not an acronym,
and therefore mixed-case. He did say that occasionally people joining the
project would mistakenly write 'MULTICS' until corrected; apparently some
of the GE folks in Phoenix were in the habit of doing this, perhaps due to
prior familiarity with GECOS.
- Dan C.
On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 7:49 PM Douglas McIlroy <
douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
The main FJCC 1964 papar, by Vyssotsky, Corbato, and
Graham, spelled
Multics with an initial cap. By contrast, Ken transcribed the aural
pun as UNIX. The lawyers did their best to keep it that way after most
of us had decided it looks better as a proper noun.
As I recall, there was an acronymic reading of Multics, but it wasn't
taken seriously enough to drag the word into all caps. Nobody proposed
an acronymic reading of UNIX. So both words defy the convention of
rendering acronyms in upper-case.
Doug
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