[TUHS] Who used *ROFF?

Clem cole clemc at ccc.com
Tue May 15 01:04:36 AEST 2018


Thinking about this typesetter C may have been later with ditroff.  

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

> On May 14, 2018, at 10:45 AM, Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> Runoff from other systems begat Unix roff.   Which begat new roff - aka  nroff.  both assume an ASR 37 as the output device.  When the first typesetter was procured typesetter roff aka troff, was born which assumes the C/A/T as the output device (which is a binary format).    This is also were typesetter C comes from.   Note these are 3 separate and different programs although nroff and troff mostly take the same input language.  These were included in V5/6/7 IIRC 
> 
> 
> 
> When newer typesetters were obtained and after the death of troff’s author,  Brian rewrote the nroff/troff package to create ditroff- device independent typesetter roff which also could support ASCII output nroff style
> 
> This version was released independently of the OS and took a separate license.   
> 
> Ditroff was reimplemented by Clark (IIRC) to create today’s groff which takes mostly a superset of the ditroff input language.  
> 
> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 
> 
>>> On May 14, 2018, at 8:41 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Mon, 14 May 2018, Doug McIlroy wrote:
>>> 
>>> Here's part of the story.
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>> You mentioned "nroff" a few times; would it not have been "troff" for their C/A/T photo-typesetter?  At least, that was the lore that I heard...
>> 
>> And what was "C/A/T" anyway (assuming that my memory is not failing me)?
>> 
>> -- Dave



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