[TUHS] roff(7)

Tony Finch dot at dotat.at
Thu Jan 6 07:15:53 AEST 2022


In Cambridge there was a local roff-alike called GCAL that ran on
Phoenix (the IBM mainframe). It was written by Philip Hazel, who went on
to write Exim and PCRE. The Exim documentation and books were prepared
using SGCAL, the Unix port of GCAL. (I don't know what the S stood for:
son of? successor?)

GCAL used roff-like initial-dot line commands. I found out recently that
GCAL's name is also based on roff, and at the same time it followed
Phoenix's bird-based naming scheme (eagle the scheduler, jackdaw the
database system, pigeon the mailer).

GCAL is short for geococcyx californianus, aka the roadrunner, which
(after an encounter with a coyote) is known to run off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(computer)

http://quercite.dx.am/

Tony.
-- 
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