[TUHS] Brian Kernighan and very early *roff history

[Will Senn]

On 1/14/22 7:27 AM, Angelo Papenhoff wrote:
> On 14/01/22, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>      > From: Angelo Papenhoff
>>
>>      > to my knowledge no troff version before the C rewrite in v7
>>
>> Apologies if I missed something, but between this list and COFF there's so
>> much low S/N traffic I skip a lot of it. Having said that, was there ever a
>> troff in assembler? I'd always had the impression that the first one was in C.
> Yes, they were both originally written in assembler. v6 has assembler
> sources for nroff and deleted directory entries of troff (and others):
>
> 00064e00: 6d01 726f 6666 332e 7300 0000 0000 0000  m.roff3.s.......
> 00064e10: 6c01 726f 6666 342e 7300 0000 0000 0000  l.roff4.s.......
> 00064e20: 6b01 726f 6666 352e 7300 0000 0000 0000  k.roff5.s.......
> 00064e30: 6a01 726f 6666 372e 7300 0000 0000 0000  j.roff7.s.......
> 00064e40: 6901 726f 6666 382e 7300 0000 0000 0000  i.roff8.s.......
> 00064e50: 0000 7375 6672 6300 0000 0000 0000 0000  ..sufrc.........
> 00064e60: 6701 7375 6674 6162 2e73 0000 0000 0000  g.suftab.s......
> 00064e70: 0000 7463 6174 7369 6d2e 7300 0000 0000  ..tcatsim.s.....
> 00064e80: 0000 7472 6300 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ..trc...........
> 00064e90: 0000 7472 6f66 6631 2e73 0000 0000 0000  ..troff1.s......
> 00064ea0: 0000 7472 6f66 6632 2e73 0000 0000 0000  ..troff2.s......
> 00064eb0: 0000 7472 6f66 6633 2e73 0000 0000 0000  ..troff3.s......
> 00064ec0: 0000 7472 6f66 6634 2e73 0000 0000 0000  ..troff4.s......
> 00064ed0: 0000 7472 6f66 6635 2e73 0000 0000 0000  ..troff5.s......
> 00064ee0: 0000 7472 6f66 6636 2e73 0000 0000 0000  ..troff6.s......
> 00064ef0: 0000 7472 6f66 6636 6100 0000 0000 0000  ..troff6a.......
> 00064f00: 0000 7472 6f66 6638 2e73 0000 0000 0000  ..troff8.s......
> 00064f10: 0000 7878 7878 7800 0000 0000 0000 0000  ..xxxxx.........
>
>> So that one is a "troff version before the C rewrite in .. v7", but it is in
>> C. Is that of any interest?
> Without having looked into it more than you have it looks like it is
> just an earlier version of the C code, but what I'm after is the
> original assembly.
>
> aap
I don't really know how deeply you've looked into this, but it may be of 
interest to you that Wollongong v6 on Interdata 32 has C sources for 
troff in /usr/source/troff:
http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/Interdata/32bit/unix/univWollongong_v6/interdata_v6.tar.gz

I know you're looking for assembler, but I also saw the comment "C 
rewrite in .. v7" in the message. It looks like a C version was 
available for v6. According to Miller's note:

interdata_v6.tar.gz
   a 'tar' format archive (with dates preserved) of all files as
   they would appear after installing the distribution, with source
   and documentation in /usr/source and /usr/doc respectively; note
   however that special files in /dev appear as ordinary files

The troff dir has date Jun 6, 1978. According to the readme, it was 
untested (maybe even unported?).

Will

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