[TUHS] Documenter's Workbench versions

Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com
Mon Mar 7 12:42:27 AEST 2022


I can't help with the history but I give you a thumbs up for trying to 
track it down.  The Documenter's Workbench is sort of the unsung hero
of Unix.  It is why Unix exists, Unix was done to write patents and 
troff and the Documenter's Workbench was all about that.

On Sun, Mar 06, 2022 at 06:02:44PM -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
> I am reading some UNIX text processing books and am interested in the
> lineage of Documenter's Workbench.
> 
> I see documentation of 1.0 (i.e
> https://archive.org/details/sysv-dwb/page/n5/mode/2up)
> I see a copy of 2.0 for 3B2 (i.e.
> https://archives.loomcom.com/3b2/software/Documenters_Workbench/)
> 
> >From there things get a little less clear, it seems like we jump to
> 3.2 with SysVR3.2?
> 
> Then there is a 3.3 version https://github.com/n-t-roff/DWB3.3
> 
> One of my books from the late 80s references 3.4 available as a source
> code purchase independent of UNIX.
> 
> Then it appears SGI might have had a 4.x strain?  (i.e.
> https://archive.org/details/sgi_Documenters_Workbench_4.1.3)
> 
> Heirloom is derived from OpenSolaris which is derived from?
> 
> Can anyone firm this lineage up a bit; and is 4.x an SGI thing or what
> (I extracted the image, the relnotes inside might as well not exist).
> 
> Regards,
> Kevin

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 


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