[TUHS] "Notes on the IBM C Compiler" by Mike Lesk

[Tom Lyon via TUHS]

I used groff.
I was stumped for a long time with the tbl missing '.' problem.
I was never any good with *roff and all the macros.


On Fri, Jul 17, 2026 at 11:53 AM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Tom,
>
> At 2026-07-11T21:51:38-0700, Tom Lyon via TUHS wrote:
> > I finally managed to extract and format this document.
> > Read it if you're in to horror literature!
> >
> > It comes from the 'memo' file in
> >
> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/IBM/370/370_c_virgin_source.tar.gz
> >
> > PDF here:
> >
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eVfRW8QS7M11MfK4kFaWRMZLXtuLWjSj/view?usp=sharing
>
> What troff did you use to format this document?  I ran into some
> interesting problems with it, including one that chokes every tbl(1) I
> have on hand to throw at it--except maybe Seventh Edition Unix tbl,
> which I did not attempt.
>
> Here's the litany of failure:
>
> $ tbl memo >/dev/null # groff 1.24.1
> tbl:memo:532: error: invalid column classifier 'h'
> tbl:memo:532: error: giving up on this table region
> $ dwb tbl memo >/dev/null # DWB 3.3
> File memo, line 532: Bad table specification character 'h'
> tbl quits
> $ solaris10 tbl memo >/dev/null # GitHub Solaris10-ditroff
> memo: line 532: bad table specification character
> tbl quits
> $ heirloom tbl memo >/dev/null
>
> memo: line 532: bad table specification character
> tbl quits
> $ 9 tbl memo >/dev/null # GitHub plan9port
>
> memo:532: warning: unrecognized column modifier character 'h'
>
> memo:532: warning: unrecognized column modifier character 'K'
>
> memo:532: warning: unrecognized column modifier character 'm'
>
> memo:532: warning: unrecognized column modifier character 'o'
>
> memo:532: warning: unrecognized column modifier character 'K'
>
> memo:532: warning: unrecognized column modifier character 'm'
>
> memo:532: warning: unrecognized column modifier character 'o'
>
> memo:532: warning: unrecognized column modifier character 'H'
>
> memo:532: warning: unrecognized column modifier character 'o'
>
> memo:532: too many columns in table
> tbl quits
>
> The cause of all this trouble is straightforward.
>
> $ sed -n '530,532p' memo
> .TS
> l l l l l l
>         Character       KA mode KB mode Holmdel Standard
>
> There's no '.' at the end of the table description.
>
> Some use of custom macros that have no evident definitions anywhere in
> the tar archive are apparent.
>
> $ sed -n '856,860p' memo
> that may not be mixed with data.  Consider declarations of
> the form
> .ip
> char *listp[] {"first", "second", "third"};
> .tp
>
> A page-local macro `mn` _is_ defined (at the top of the document), but
> in one place it is misspelled.  This is a silent failure on AT&T troff,
> but not necessarily with GNU troff, to which you can give the `-w mac`
> option to diagnose calls of undefined macros (or requests, or
> interpolations of undefined diversions).
>
> I'm attaching some "modernizing" fixups for the document, in case
> anyone's interested.
>
> Regards,
> Branden
>