27 Nov
2019
27 Nov
'19
8:53 p.m.
We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, and
was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next time
you see "jfo" in Unix documentation.
He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here.
-- Dave
28 Nov
28 Nov
12:06 a.m.
What do the J and F stand for?
Warner
On Wed, Nov 27, 2019, 1:54 PM Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a
hand in developing
Unix, and
was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next
time
you see "jfo" in Unix documentation.
He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here.
-- Dave
12:43 a.m.
Wikipedia[0] lists his name as Joseph F. Ossanna, so they don't seem to
know either
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Ossanna
- finn
On 2019-11-28 00:06, Warner Losh wrote:
What do the J and F stand for?
Warner
On Wed, Nov 27, 2019, 1:54 PM Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
> We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing
> Unix, and
> was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the
> next
> time
> you see "jfo" in Unix documentation.
>
> He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here.
>
> -- Dave
>
5:16 p.m.
I've done some searching through newspaper archives and various
Ancestry.com-indexed databases. I haven't found any use of a middle name
spelled out, always F. I even have an image of his draft card and it just
reads "Joseph F. Ossanna, Jr."
However, digging a little deeper finds that his father went by the name
"Joseph FRANK Ossanna" so it's quite likely that this was the son's
middle
name (since he was a "junior"). I suspect he might have avoided spelling
out Frank because people would have difficulty undersding it wasn't short
for Francis or something.
5:18 p.m.
Just to follow up, I found JF in the 1940 census records. He indeed was
Joseph Frank Ossanna, Jr.
-----Original Message-----
From: TUHS <tuhs-bounces(a)minnie.tuhs.org> On Behalf Of
ron(a)ronnatalie.com
Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2019 12:16 PM
To: 'Finn O'Leary' <finnoleary(a)inventati.org>rg>; tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna
I've done some searching through newspaper archives and various
Ancestry.com-indexed databases. I haven't found any use of a middle
name
spelled out, always F. I even have an image of his draft card and it
just
reads "Joseph F. Ossanna, Jr."
However, digging a little deeper finds that his father went by the name
"Joseph FRANK Ossanna" so it's quite likely that this was the son's
middle
name (since he was a "junior"). I suspect he might have avoided
spelling
out Frank because people would have difficulty
undersding it wasn't short
for
Francis or something.
3:43 a.m.
I'll say this every time his name comes up, it's one of the great regrets
of my life that I did not get to meet this guy. I think troff is genius,
you can ask me why and I'll tell you, don't want to bore the list with
a ton of arcane, but useful if you care about it, stuff. Troff was
amazing, just look at what was built on it, eqn, pic, tbl, and more.
I so wish I could have met this guy and told him how much his work meant
to me. I've used troff for everything, I have a perl script that took
troff -ms input and produced a web site. I ran a company for 18 years,
our logo was done in troff. I ran a conference that did most of the
papers in LaTex and I encouraged troff and the people who use troff came
to me and said "this was so much easier than LaTex". Yep.
So he may not have the fame that Ken and Brian and Dennis and Doug and
others have but he's one of my heros. Along with all of them and other
Bell Labs folks.
RIP Joseph Ossanna, you are missed. I wish I had met you.
On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 07:53:54AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a
hand in developing Unix,
and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next
time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation.
He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here.
-- Dave
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
30 Nov
30 Nov
5:45 p.m.
On 2019-11-28 03:43, Larry McVoy wrote:
I think troff is genius, you can ask me why and
I'll tell
you, don't want to bore the list with a ton of arcane,
but useful if you care about it, stuff.
Wait, is that not what the list is for? :)
I think I speak for more than a few people here when I say
that I would love to hear what you have to say about troff
thanks
--
- Finn
1608
days inactive
1611
days old
8 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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Dave Horsfall -
David Arnold -
Finn O'Leary -
Larry McVoy -
ron＠ronnatalie.com -
Thomas Paulsen -
Warner Losh