[TUHS] Berkeley Font Catalog

[TUHS] Berkeley Font Catalog

[segaloco via TUHS]

Hello, I've just today secured purchase of an original 4BSD manual and papers set and a copy of what I believe is the V6 papers set as well.  Of note amongst the tabs I could read from the pictures of the Berkeley binder was a section of fonts that I don't think I've seen before named the Berkeley Font Catalog.  I did a bit of searching around and didn't find anything matching that on first inspection re: scanned and source-available BSD doc collections.  Anyone got the scoop on this?

Either way, once these arrive in the mail in I'll try and see what the delta might be between these and the current sources in V6 and 4BSD stuff on the archive.  They're from the collection of an emeritus professor on the east coast, and I'm not sure if they represent unmodified docs shipped from Bell and Berkeley or have local modifications. In any case, his son said they'll be going through more material soon and are liable to turn up more UNIX stuff, so I'll keep folks posted if I come into possession of anything else particularly spiffy.

- Matt G.

[TUHS] Re: Berkeley Font Catalog

[Clem Cole]

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On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 2:17 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> Hello, I've just today secured purchase of an original 4BSD manual and
> papers set and a copy of what I believe is the V6 papers set as well.  Of
> note amongst the tabs I could read from the pictures of the Berkeley binder
> was a section of fonts that I don't think I've seen before named the
> Berkeley Font Catalog.  I did a bit of searching around and didn't find
> anything matching that on first inspection re: scanned and source-available
> BSD doc collections.  Anyone got the scoop on this?
>
Sure

The Berkeley Font Catalog was a collection of 200 bpi fonts that could be
used with vcat - the virtual  CAT/4 typesetter and old tools like some of
the original EE cad editors like Ken Keller's and another from Tom Ferrin
at UCSF. The bulk of them was a copy of the Hershey Fonts [
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey_fonts] and a number of fonts
specialty fonts, such as a set for typing chess, that had been developed
originally for the XGP at CMU, MIT, and Stanford.  Between the 3 ARPAnet
sites, there was a lot of mixing and matching.  Note: I should have a Xerox
copy of them from one of the UCB docs in my files. They are on a BSD tape,
I would look in the contributed area, but I don't remember.   There is
likely troff input to print the catalog (using vcat), but again I am trying
to remember where any of that was in the distribution kits.

FWIW: a few months back, Rob has corrected the history that the original
vcat(1) was Canadian in origin.  I thought that Ferrin had his hand in an
early version that came to UCB (This is likely an example of the side
comment sometimes used, that joy peed on it to make things smell like UCB,
as Tom was across the bay).  I also thought Tom had collected much of the
catalog originally; and while I could be smoking something here -- I seem
to remember that he also had some sort of Stanford connection with some of
his graphics work [the UCSF and Stanford medical schools - were doing 3D
graphics for medical diags at some point].   Tom was a graphics guy, and I
know he was mixed up in some of that so it would have made sense for him to
be somehow involved.  It was not for a few years later, when Barskey showed
up at UCB that there was any serious graphics work being done -- before
that, only ECAD tools like's Ken and later Oster's.

Clem
ᐧ

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[TUHS] Re: Berkeley Font Catalog

[Clem Cole]

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PS I should probably add a small PS on the timeline.   I got the vcat stuff
from Ferin when I was still at Tektronix [where we had the two other
members of the three 'Graphics Killer-Bs' -- Kelly Booth and the late John
Beatty working with us in TekLabs during sabbaticals].  This was 2 years
before I headed down to UCB myself.


ᐧ

On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 3:11 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 2:17 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello, I've just today secured purchase of an original 4BSD manual and
>> papers set and a copy of what I believe is the V6 papers set as well.  Of
>> note amongst the tabs I could read from the pictures of the Berkeley binder
>> was a section of fonts that I don't think I've seen before named the
>> Berkeley Font Catalog.  I did a bit of searching around and didn't find
>> anything matching that on first inspection re: scanned and source-available
>> BSD doc collections.  Anyone got the scoop on this?
>>
> Sure
>
> The Berkeley Font Catalog was a collection of 200 bpi fonts that could be
> used with vcat - the virtual  CAT/4 typesetter and old tools like some of
> the original EE cad editors like Ken Keller's and another from Tom Ferrin
> at UCSF. The bulk of them was a copy of the Hershey Fonts [
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey_fonts] and a number of fonts
> specialty fonts, such as a set for typing chess, that had been developed
> originally for the XGP at CMU, MIT, and Stanford.  Between the 3 ARPAnet
> sites, there was a lot of mixing and matching.  Note: I should have a Xerox
> copy of them from one of the UCB docs in my files. They are on a BSD tape,
> I would look in the contributed area, but I don't remember.   There is
> likely troff input to print the catalog (using vcat), but again I am trying
> to remember where any of that was in the distribution kits.
>
> FWIW: a few months back, Rob has corrected the history that the original
> vcat(1) was Canadian in origin.  I thought that Ferrin had his hand in an
> early version that came to UCB (This is likely an example of the side
> comment sometimes used, that joy peed on it to make things smell like UCB,
> as Tom was across the bay).  I also thought Tom had collected much of the
> catalog originally; and while I could be smoking something here -- I seem
> to remember that he also had some sort of Stanford connection with some of
> his graphics work [the UCSF and Stanford medical schools - were doing 3D
> graphics for medical diags at some point].   Tom was a graphics guy, and I
> know he was mixed up in some of that so it would have made sense for him to
> be somehow involved.  It was not for a few years later, when Barskey showed
> up at UCB that there was any serious graphics work being done -- before
> that, only ECAD tools like's Ken and later Oster's.
>
> Clem
> ᐧ
>

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[TUHS] Re: Berkeley Font Catalog

[Rich Salz]

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You might also find this interesting,
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/41034. Or search around for XTP font
catalog. I vaguely remember a document from Stanford the compared it to
Joule theft, you had to know where to look. But I can't find it.

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[TUHS] Re: Berkeley Font Catalog

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Rich Salz wrote:
> You might also find this interesting,
> https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/41034

Or this: https://www.saildart.org/allow/pdf/SAILON/74/find-a-font.pdf

XGP fonts have been preserved on MIT and Stanford backup tapes.

[TUHS] Re: Berkeley Font Catalog

[Jonathan Gray]

On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 06:17:03PM +0000, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
> Hello, I've just today secured purchase of an original 4BSD manual
> and papers set and a copy of what I believe is the V6 papers set
> as well.  Of note amongst the tabs I could read from the pictures
> of the Berkeley binder was a section of fonts that I don't think
> I've seen before named the Berkeley Font Catalog.  I did a bit of
> searching around and didn't find anything matching that on first
> inspection re: scanned and source-available BSD doc collections. 
> Anyone got the scoop on this?

The Berkeley Font Catalog appears in existing scans.

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/mtXinu/MT_XINU_Vol_0.pdf
pg 154
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_mtXinuMTXI_21123781/page/n153/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/h42_PCS_MUNIX_Programmers_Manual_Volume_2C/page/n107/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/h42_PCS_MUNIX_Volume_III/page/n575/mode/2up

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/ultrix-32/3.0/AA-MF06A-TE_ULTRIX-32_3.0_Supplementary_Documents_Vol.1_General_User_1988.pdf
pg 520 6-27
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_decvaxultrRIX323.0SupplementaryDocumentsVol.1Gener_33726499/page/n519/mode/2up

"A copy of volume 2C of the 4.1BSD or 4.2BSD manual includes the
Berkeley Font Catalog"
https://archive.org/details/login_sept92/page/n29/mode/2up

[TUHS] Re: Berkeley Font Catalog

[segaloco via TUHS]

Alright, following up as I've received what is hopefully only the first shipment of documents.  Sadly the specific binder in the eBay pictures was not in the box...so I've reached out to the seller to figure out where that one might have gone to, the 4BSD one was what I was interested in from their auction.

That said, what they did send me is also pretty interesting.  Lots of info here, so grep for your subject of interest if so desired.

I received nearly complete copies of the V6 and V7 manuals, including the paper sets.  The V6 manual itself appears to be complete, but the papers set is missing:

    Setting Up UNIX, UNIX Assembler Reference Manual, A Tutorial Introduction to the ED Text Editor
    UNIX for Beginners, On the Security of UNIX, A System For Typesetting Mathematics
    DC - An Interactive Desk Calculator, and BC - An Arbitrary Precision Desk Calculator

Worth mentioning, the TMG and M6 documents don't appear to be in the same typesetting as the others, rather, they look more ROFF-ish than TROFF-ish.

As for the V7 manual, that one is a tad bit more interesting in that it does appear to be a modified version.  From the best I can tell this is a V7 with a bunch of ARPA stuff thrown in, so it has stuff like ftp and telnet as well.  The full list of non-standard pages is here: https://pastebin.com/S38c9rtX In this situation, non-standard meaning visibly different typesetting, as some of those pages do represent stuff that was in V7, but the pages in this copy are noticeably not the original Bell typeset versions.

The V7 paper set is complete as far as Bell components, but then also includes (two copies between a couple binders) a number of extra "sections".  These are:

    - DATACOPY - Has programs for handling waveform and seismic data, I saw several USGS references in disparate papers shuffled in with the non manual stuff (which I'll mention a little further down)
    - SEISMIC - Documentation for C and Fortran "Seismic" libraries, looks like seismic data interpretation stuff.
    - "Mod 1" - On MIT Lincoln Laboratory letterhead, Manual Updates from Dan Bach to "Mod 1 Team" indicating manual updates for the "second release of Mod 1."
    - SDP - Signal Display Package, these are analysis programs for visualizing waveform and seismic data
    - GRAPHICS - Quote, "This document describes our UNIX graphics system." Perusing a few pages, I can't find anywhere that "our" is qualified, so can't really say whose this is, but I think all of these are part of the same package, their typesetting is all comparable.

So that's the manual stuff, with the most interesting thing amongst the manuals being the USGS stuff, there's some sort of MIT involvement there, and there's some sort of RAND involvement as well as one of the added manpages, ned(I), is a text editor from RAND with quite a detailed manpage.

On to the "rest".  In addition to some binders of UNIX manuals, the seller also threw in a plastic wrapped bundle of miscellaneous stuff.  There are a few emails concerning VMS/UNIX performance comparisons on the VAX, with one paper coming from Bill Joy, another from "Quam at SRI-KL", forwarded around a bit, ultimately landing in the BBN-UNIX group at the forwarding of "Nemeth".  The original text dates to Feb 6th, 1980.  Looks like the original author was David L. Kashtan at SRI International.  What's really cool is it looks like the benchmark code is present here too.  There's also a second email tacked on to the end from Steve Shafer at CMU discussing ongoing preference for UNIX and some thoughts on how to deal with the shortcomings.

There is a conference report from a "Software Tools and UNIX Users Group" conference at the University of Toronto, dated June 26 1979 and authored by a David M. Phillips.  The report goes on to note the various topics discussed which include UNIX V7, much language development at Berkeley.  Included are a few promotions for T-shirts, among them the famous artwork with a PDP-11 being attended to by a series of little daemons getting into all sorts of mischief.  At the time the shirts could be purchased for $6.50 plus $0.50 shipping from "TRI-J Color Print Co" in Arlington Heights, IL.  A little further on, there's also "Adventure" T-shirts for sale, presumably pertinent to the famous game. Described as "Has picture of dragon and related stuff. Says something about computer gaming".  Not sure if that was how it was actually described or someone was getting tired by the end of transcription.

There are a few license agreements with Berkeley, an older one only listing a need for a 32V license and a couple later ones with text pertinent to having a V7, System III, or System V license.  The earlier license, issued June 20th, 1980, appears to be for 3BSD for a single VAX 11/780 at MIT at a "duplication charge" of $200.  Among these various materials is also a letter from WECos Patent Licensing Director E.G. Baldwin to Lincoln Laboratory at MIT concerning their adding a new PDP-11 to their fleet.  The letter is dated July 31, 1980, and indicates the cost to add this single "DESIGNATED CPU" as it is termed is $9,400.  Included too is the packing slip indicating the shipment of a magnetic tape of UNIX/32V and 3 volumes of documentation.  Not on the packing slip but mentioned in an attached letter is mention of the BSTJ 1978 volume as well, aligning with the ;login: bit I read a little while back about them shipping these out with UNIX copies.

There are also some papers paperclipped together suggesting whoever originally held these was working on getting a 2.9BSD license, as there is a copy of the release summary, an order form, checklist, and two copies of the license agreement, likewise $200 dollars but this time implying the need for a V7, System III, or System V license, not just 32V, presumably since this is PDP not VAX.  These documents are dated June 1983 at the earliest.

There is a "Guide to the UNIX Fortran System" by J.N. Rottman of Princeton, dated September 1975.  Doesn't look related to Bell Fortran efforts but I'll admit to being a bit green on anything Fortran related.  There's also a paper ROFF manual, which is pretty cool.  I wasn't aware one was actually produced, I thought the documentation just amounted to the request summary present in the man pages.  There's a Mitre Corporation memo on a UNIX User's Group meeting October 1-3, 1976 at Harvard including a summary of discussed topics and a PWB Synopsis of Facilities.  There is also a printout of "The tmac.l Text Macro Library" along with typesetter source to the same document and what I believe is a printout of the macro package itself.  There is a "UNIX Command Reference" that looks similar to the content presented in both the "Command Reference" section 9 of the trade book versions of the UNIX Programmer's Manual Seventh Edition as well as the "UNIX Reference Guide" here https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Manuals/Unix_4.0/UNIX_Reference_Guide.pdf

Finally there are a few non-UNIX items the seller included as well, among them is a big stack of Motorola technical and marketing materials concerning the 68000 and some embedded systems and the VMC 68/2 Microcomputer.  There are a couple of slides that appear to be from an iAPX 286 marketing demonstration.  There is an article on "Tiny Hi" by Martin Buchanan which appeared in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calistheincs & Orthodontia, October 1976.  Finally, there is a single amusing page amongst the lot labeled "Newest DEC Opcodes" with opcodes such as "EIO - Execute Invalid Opcode, LTS - Loop Til Smokes, RTP - Reduce Throughput".  Seems to be the same paper being described here: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/kH0eKq2LRd8

Whew, marathon typing over.  Lots of goodies here, if you feel a particular item warrants a discussion thread, feel free to snip it as a quote to start a new message, otherwise email just me if you have questions about anything in particular.  Otherwise, I'm going to be going over this all with a finer toothed comb once I get the other shipment (which as I was typing this novel I did get confirmation is also on the way, they didn't ship both the same day.)

- Matt G.

P.S. Sorry if the later bits are less descriptive, found out 3/4th of the way through I have somewhere to be pretty soon.

------- Original Message -------
On Sunday, May 14th, 2023 at 11:17 AM, segaloco <segaloco@protonmail.com> wrote:


> Hello, I've just today secured purchase of an original 4BSD manual and papers set and a copy of what I believe is the V6 papers set as well. Of note amongst the tabs I could read from the pictures of the Berkeley binder was a section of fonts that I don't think I've seen before named the Berkeley Font Catalog. I did a bit of searching around and didn't find anything matching that on first inspection re: scanned and source-available BSD doc collections. Anyone got the scoop on this?
> 
> Either way, once these arrive in the mail in I'll try and see what the delta might be between these and the current sources in V6 and 4BSD stuff on the archive. They're from the collection of an emeritus professor on the east coast, and I'm not sure if they represent unmodified docs shipped from Bell and Berkeley or have local modifications. In any case, his son said they'll be going through more material soon and are liable to turn up more UNIX stuff, so I'll keep folks posted if I come into possession of anything else particularly spiffy.
> 
> - Matt G.

[TUHS] Re: Berkeley Font Catalog

[Mary Ann Horton]

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As I fuzzily recall, I put together the original Berkeley Font Catalog 
from various sources (such as Stanford's more complete catalog) to show 
what we had available on the 36" Versatec at Berkeley. Looking at what's 
in 4.1BSD vol 2C, I suspect somebody polished it up.

Most of my effort went into fed, a font editor that worked on Berkeley's 
flakey HP 2648 graphics terminal, and editing the Hershey fonts, which 
were seriously mangled, into a semi-presentable typeface. I could only 
dream of having Times Roman available.

Thanks,

/Mary Ann Horton/ (she/her/ma'am)
maryannhorton.com <https://maryannhorton.com>

“This is a great book about an amazing journey of a woman
who went through hell to become the person she is today.”
* - Monica Helms, creator of the transgender flag*

"Brave and Important - Don’t miss this wonderful book!"
* - Laura L. Engel, Intl. Memoir Writers Assn.*

       Available on Amazon and bn.com. Audiobook on Google Play.

	<https://www.amazon.com/Trailblazer-Lighting-Transgender-Equality-Corporate-ebook/dp/B0B8F2BR9B>



On 5/14/23 12:11, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 2:17 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>     Hello, I've just today secured purchase of an original 4BSD manual
>     and papers set and a copy of what I believe is the V6 papers set
>     as well. Of note amongst the tabs I could read from the pictures
>     of the Berkeley binder was a section of fonts that I don't think
>     I've seen before named the Berkeley Font Catalog.  I did a bit of
>     searching around and didn't find anything matching that on first
>     inspection re: scanned and source-available BSD doc collections. 
>     Anyone got the scoop on this?
>
> Sure
>
> The Berkeley Font Catalog was a collection of 200 bpi fonts that could 
> be used with vcat - the virtual CAT/4 typesetter and old tools like 
> some of the original EE cad editors like Ken Keller's and another from 
> Tom Ferrin at UCSF. The bulk of them was a copy of the Hershey Fonts 
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey_fonts] and a number of fonts 
> specialty fonts, such as a set for typing chess, that had been 
> developed originally for the XGP at CMU, MIT, and Stanford.  Between 
> the 3 ARPAnet sites, there was a lot of mixing and matching.  Note: I 
> should have a Xerox copy of them from one of the UCB docs in my files. 
> They are on a BSD tape, I would look in the contributed area, but I 
> don't remember.   There is likely troff input to print the catalog 
> (using vcat), but again I am trying to remember where any of that was 
> in the distribution kits.
>
> FWIW: a few months back, Rob has corrected the history that the 
> original vcat(1) was Canadian in origin.  I thought that Ferrin had 
> his hand in an early version that came to UCB (This is likely an 
> example of the side comment sometimes used, that joy peed on it to 
> make things smell like UCB, as Tom was across the bay).  I also 
> thought Tom had collected much of the catalog originally; and while I 
> could be smoking something here -- I seem to remember that he also had 
> some sort of Stanford connection with some of his graphics work [the 
> UCSF and Stanford medical schools - were doing 3D graphics for medical 
> diags at some point].  Tom was a graphics guy, and I know he was mixed 
> up in some of that so it would have made sense for him to be somehow 
> involved.  It was not for a few years later, when Barskey showed up at 
> UCB that there was any serious graphics work being done -- before 
> that, only ECAD tools like's Ken and later Oster's.
>
> Clem
> ᐧ

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