[TUHS] Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

Mychaela Falconia falcon at freecalypso.org
Thu Jan 18 17:00:14 AEST 2024


John Gardner wrote:

> I'm a professional graphic designer with access to commercial typeface
> authoring software. Send me the highest-quality and most comprehensive
> scans of a C/A/T-printed document, and I'll get to work.

Are you offering to donate your labor in terms of typeface design, or
will it be a type of deal where the community will need to collectively
pitch in money to cover the cost of you doing it professionally?

In either case, the "C/A/T-printed document" of most value to this
project would be the same one G. Branden Robinson is referring to:

> If you don't have my scan of CSTR #54 (1976), which helpfully dumps all
> of the glyphs in the faces used by the Bell Labs CSRC C/A/T-4, let me
> know and I'll send it along.  I won't vouch for its high quality but it
> should be comprehensive with respect to coverage.

The paper in question is Nroff/Troff User's Manual by Joseph F. Ossanna,
dated 1976-10-11, which was indeed also CSTR #54.  The document is 33
pages long in its original form, and page 31 out of the 33 is the most
interesting one for the purpose of font recreation: it is the page that
exhibits all 4 fonts of 102 characters each.  Here are the few published
scans I am aware of:

1) Page 245 of:

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/UNIX_Programmers_Manual_Seventh_Edition_January_1979_Volume_2A_SRI_Reprint_June_1980.pdf

2) Page 235 of:

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/UNIX_Programmers_Manual_Seventh_Edition_Vol_2_1983.pdf

3) Page 239 of:

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/VA-004A_UNIX_Programmers_Manual_Edition_Seven_Volume_2A_197901.pdf

4) Page 499 of:

https://archive.org/details/uum-supplement-4.2bsd

Question to Branden: the scan you are referring to as "my scan", how
does it compare to the 4 I just linked above?  If your scan has better
quality than all 4 versions I linked above, can you please make it
public?

M~


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