* [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna @ 2019-11-27 20:53 Dave Horsfall 2019-11-28 0:06 ` Warner Losh ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Dave Horsfall @ 2019-11-27 20:53 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here. -- Dave ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2019-11-27 20:53 [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna Dave Horsfall @ 2019-11-28 0:06 ` Warner Losh 2019-11-28 0:43 ` Finn O'Leary 2019-11-28 0:46 ` David Arnold 2019-11-28 3:43 ` Larry McVoy 2019-11-28 9:19 ` Thomas Paulsen 2 siblings, 2 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Warner Losh @ 2019-11-28 0:06 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 395 bytes --] What do the J and F stand for? Warner On Wed, Nov 27, 2019, 1:54 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote: > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing > Unix, and > was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next > time > you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > > He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here. > > -- Dave > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 740 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2019-11-28 0:06 ` Warner Losh @ 2019-11-28 0:43 ` Finn O'Leary 2019-11-28 17:16 ` ron 2019-11-28 0:46 ` David Arnold 1 sibling, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: Finn O'Leary @ 2019-11-28 0:43 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs Wikipedia[0] lists his name as Joseph F. Ossanna, so they don't seem to know either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Ossanna - finn On 2019-11-28 00:06, Warner Losh wrote: > What do the J and F stand for? > > Warner > > On Wed, Nov 27, 2019, 1:54 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote: > >> We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing >> Unix, and >> was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the >> next >> time >> you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. >> >> He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here. >> >> -- Dave >> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2019-11-28 0:43 ` Finn O'Leary @ 2019-11-28 17:16 ` ron 2019-11-28 17:18 ` ron 0 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: ron @ 2019-11-28 17:16 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 'Finn O'Leary', tuhs I've done some searching through newspaper archives and various Ancestry.com-indexed databases. I haven't found any use of a middle name spelled out, always F. I even have an image of his draft card and it just reads "Joseph F. Ossanna, Jr." However, digging a little deeper finds that his father went by the name "Joseph FRANK Ossanna" so it's quite likely that this was the son's middle name (since he was a "junior"). I suspect he might have avoided spelling out Frank because people would have difficulty undersding it wasn't short for Francis or something. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2019-11-28 17:16 ` ron @ 2019-11-28 17:18 ` ron 0 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: ron @ 2019-11-28 17:18 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 'Finn O'Leary', tuhs Just to follow up, I found JF in the 1940 census records. He indeed was Joseph Frank Ossanna, Jr. > -----Original Message----- > From: TUHS <tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org> On Behalf Of > ron@ronnatalie.com > Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2019 12:16 PM > To: 'Finn O'Leary' <finnoleary@inventati.org>; tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org > Subject: Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna > > I've done some searching through newspaper archives and various > Ancestry.com-indexed databases. I haven't found any use of a middle > name > spelled out, always F. I even have an image of his draft card and it just > reads "Joseph F. Ossanna, Jr." > > However, digging a little deeper finds that his father went by the name > "Joseph FRANK Ossanna" so it's quite likely that this was the son's middle > name (since he was a "junior"). I suspect he might have avoided spelling > out Frank because people would have difficulty undersding it wasn't short for > Francis or something. > > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2019-11-28 0:06 ` Warner Losh 2019-11-28 0:43 ` Finn O'Leary @ 2019-11-28 0:46 ` David Arnold 1 sibling, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: David Arnold @ 2019-11-28 0:46 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Warner Losh; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society > On 28 Nov 2019, at 11:06, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote: > > What do the J and F stand for? The “J” is Jospeh (and Joe); I don’t know about the “F”. d ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2019-11-27 20:53 [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna Dave Horsfall 2019-11-28 0:06 ` Warner Losh @ 2019-11-28 3:43 ` Larry McVoy 2019-11-30 17:45 ` Finn O'Leary 2019-11-28 9:19 ` Thomas Paulsen 2 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: Larry McVoy @ 2019-11-28 3:43 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society I'll say this every time his name comes up, it's one of the great regrets of my life that I did not get to meet this guy. I think troff is genius, you can ask me why and I'll tell you, don't want to bore the list with a ton of arcane, but useful if you care about it, stuff. Troff was amazing, just look at what was built on it, eqn, pic, tbl, and more. I so wish I could have met this guy and told him how much his work meant to me. I've used troff for everything, I have a perl script that took troff -ms input and produced a web site. I ran a company for 18 years, our logo was done in troff. I ran a conference that did most of the papers in LaTex and I encouraged troff and the people who use troff came to me and said "this was so much easier than LaTex". Yep. So he may not have the fame that Ken and Brian and Dennis and Doug and others have but he's one of my heros. Along with all of them and other Bell Labs folks. RIP Joseph Ossanna, you are missed. I wish I had met you. On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 07:53:54AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, > and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next > time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > > He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here. > > -- Dave -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2019-11-28 3:43 ` Larry McVoy @ 2019-11-30 17:45 ` Finn O'Leary 0 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Finn O'Leary @ 2019-11-30 17:45 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs On 2019-11-28 03:43, Larry McVoy wrote: > I think troff is genius, you can ask me why and I'll tell > you, don't want to bore the list with a ton of arcane, > but useful if you care about it, stuff. Wait, is that not what the list is for? :) I think I speak for more than a few people here when I say that I would love to hear what you have to say about troff thanks -- - Finn ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2019-11-27 20:53 [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna Dave Horsfall 2019-11-28 0:06 ` Warner Losh 2019-11-28 3:43 ` Larry McVoy @ 2019-11-28 9:19 ` Thomas Paulsen 2 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Thomas Paulsen @ 2019-11-28 9:19 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: tuhs >We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, without Joe there wouldn't be any *NIX (Remember the Patent Department), and we all would be bored running Windows.. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna @ 2018-11-28 13:09 Noel Chiappa 0 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Noel Chiappa @ 2018-11-28 13:09 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc > From: Larry McVoy > (*) I know that nroff was "new run off" and it came from somewhere, MIT? > Some old system ... I've never seen docs for the previous system and I > kinda think Joe took it to the next level. Definitely! The original 'runoff' was on CTSS, written by Jerry Saltzer. It had a companion program, 'typset', which was an editor for preparing runoff input. A memo describing them is available here: http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/ctss/AH.9.01.html From the look of things, it didn't have any macro capability. Runoff was moved to Multics fairly early: here's its entry from the Multics glossary: A Multics BCPL version of runoff was written by Doug McIlroy and Bob Morris. A version of runoff in PL/I was written by Dennis Capps in 1974. ... Multics documentation was transitioned from the Flexowriters to use of runoff when the system became self-hosting about 1968. runoff was used for manuals, release bulletins, internal memos and other documentation for most of the 70s. To support this use, Multics runoff had many features such as multi-pass execution and variable definition and expansion that went far beyond the CTSS version. Multics manuals were formatted with complex macros, included by the document source, that handled tables of contents and standard formatting, and supported the single sourcing of the commands manual and the info files for commands. So the BCPL version would have been before Bell exited the project. I'm not sure if the 'macros' comment refers to the BCPL version, or the PL/I. Here's the Multics 'info' segment about runoff: http://web.mit.edu/multics-history/source/Multics/doc/info_segments/runoff.info which doesn't mention macros, but lists a few things that might be used for macros. It refers to "the runoff command in the MPM Commands" volume (a reference to "Multics Programmer's manual: Commands and Active Functions") for details; this is available on bitsavers, see page 3-619 in "AG92-03A", February 1980 edition. Noel ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna @ 2018-11-27 21:47 Dave Horsfall 2018-11-27 23:08 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Dave Horsfall @ 2018-11-27 21:47 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. -- Dave ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-27 21:47 Dave Horsfall @ 2018-11-27 23:08 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS 2018-11-28 2:57 ` Larry McVoy 2018-11-28 9:20 ` Donald ODona 2018-11-29 3:54 ` Dave Horsfall 2 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: Ken Thompson via TUHS @ 2018-11-27 23:08 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society joe was much more than that. he knew how to play the system. example: out of whole cloth, he invented a form to order a teletype and opx (bell labs extension) installed in the home. he then filled out the form for each of the unix-room dennisons. there was a phone call from a confused clerk, and then we all got teletypes and data sets at home. as an aside, the opx came with free watts (long distance which was very expensive in those days.) On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote: > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, > and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next > time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > > -- Dave ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-27 23:08 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS @ 2018-11-28 2:57 ` Larry McVoy 2018-11-28 4:48 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS 2018-11-28 5:22 ` Fabio Scotoni 0 siblings, 2 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Larry McVoy @ 2018-11-28 2:57 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Ken Thompson; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society As a long time roff fan (I still use it, yes, I've learned LaTex, I much prefer roff), I'm hugely bummed that Joe left us so early. I feel like there would be more fun stories, like Ken's story. If I remember correctly, he wrote the first (Unix *) version of roff in PDP-11 assembly, right? Granted, PDP-11 assembly is perhaps the most pleasant assembly ever, but it is still assembly. Roff is a non-trivial program, I can't say that I've every written anything remotely that big in assembly (the only thing I'm proud of is writing swtch() in VAX, 68K, and some other CPU that I can't remember, but that was tiny, hard to get right, but tiny). I've got mad respect for what he did, I feel like the whole roff thing doesn't get enough respect. It wasn't just roff, though that started it, it was pic (I *love* pic), eqn, all the other filters that go down to roff. For lmbench I wrote my own grap like tools because grap wasn't open source. I was talking to Marc Donner, a Morgan Stanley techy (since moved on to google and who knows where) about why I liked roff. At the time I had built webroff which took roff -ms input and made websites. Marc pointed out that the reason I liked roff was, for the most part, it didn't say how to do something (that was buried in the macros), it said what you wanted to do. Ken, if you have more Joe stories I'd love to hear them, I feel like I missed out on a cool person. (*) I know that nroff was "new run off" and it came from somewhere, MIT? Some old system, but it wasn't invented in Unix. That said, I've never seen docs for the previous system and I kinda think Joe took it to the next level. If you haven't studied the docs and written macros, you should. It's a pretty neat system. On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 03:08:36PM -0800, Ken Thompson via TUHS wrote: > joe was much more than that. he knew how > to play the system. example: > out of whole cloth, he invented a form to > order a teletype and opx (bell labs extension) > installed in the home. he then filled out the > form for each of the unix-room dennisons. > there was a phone call from a confused > clerk, and then we all got teletypes and > data sets at home. as an aside, the opx > came with free watts (long distance which > was very expensive in those days.) > > > On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote: > > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, > > and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next > > time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > > > > -- Dave -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-28 2:57 ` Larry McVoy @ 2018-11-28 4:48 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS 2018-11-28 14:44 ` Dan Cross ` (3 more replies) 2018-11-28 5:22 ` Fabio Scotoni 1 sibling, 4 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Ken Thompson via TUHS @ 2018-11-28 4:48 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society another joe: echo 1 was a 100 foot balloon that was launched into space in the early 60s. this was the first satellite that was easily visible to the naked eye. joe wrote a set of fortran programs that tracked the orbit of echo and calculated the direction to look from a point on earth. to do this, he had to learn fortran and orbital dynamics. the programs were used to point antennas to send emf from california. bouncing off echo and received at bell labs in new jersey. thus, thanks to joe, echo was the first communications satellite. by the time i came to bell labs (1966) the program, azel, for azimuth/elevation, was expanded to track planets, moons, satellites, etc. moreover, it tracked the shadow of the earth cast by the sun (night). it could predict within a few seconds when echo would wink on or off as it passed through the shadow. a version of azel was maintained all the time i was at bell labs. we used it to predict eclipses, transits, occultations etc. when we first got a voice synthesizer, the day's predictions were spoken at 5pm in case there was anything interesting. anyway, at 5pm on june 8, 1983 the voice announced an "occultation of mercury" for early the next morning. no one had heard of such a thing. it was extremely rare. mercury had to be at about its max elongation; the moon had to be only a few hours old (or young); it had to be dark; the moon and mercury had to be above the horizon; and lastly, the moon had to occult mercury. we all (me, lee mcmahon, dennis ritchie, rob pike, and bob morris) frantically tried to verify that it was real. it was, but it would only be about 5 degrees above the horizon facing right into new york city. not a chance. we all went home. later that night we were writing to each other and calculating that in an airplane at 10,000 feet, the event moved up to 10 or 15 degrees above the horizon. also, in an airplane, we could avoid nyc. so at 3am, we (me, rob pike, rae mclellan) went to the airport equipped with cameras and binoculars. we flew north as high as the plane would go. we might be the only people in the world who have seen an occultation of mercury. thank you joe. On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 6:57 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote: > As a long time roff fan (I still use it, yes, I've learned LaTex, I much > prefer roff), I'm hugely bummed that Joe left us so early. I feel like > there would be more fun stories, like Ken's story. > > If I remember correctly, he wrote the first (Unix *) version of roff in > PDP-11 assembly, right? Granted, PDP-11 assembly is perhaps the most > pleasant assembly ever, but it is still assembly. Roff is a non-trivial > program, I can't say that I've every written anything remotely that big > in assembly (the only thing I'm proud of is writing swtch() in VAX, 68K, > and some other CPU that I can't remember, but that was tiny, hard to get > right, but tiny). I've got mad respect for what he did, I feel like the > whole roff thing doesn't get enough respect. It wasn't just roff, though > that started it, it was pic (I *love* pic), eqn, all the other filters > that go down to roff. For lmbench I wrote my own grap like tools > because grap wasn't open source. > > I was talking to Marc Donner, a Morgan Stanley techy (since moved on > to google and who knows where) about why I liked roff. At the time > I had built webroff which took roff -ms input and made websites. > Marc pointed out that the reason I liked roff was, for the most part, > it didn't say how to do something (that was buried in the macros), > it said what you wanted to do. > > Ken, if you have more Joe stories I'd love to hear them, I feel like > I missed out on a cool person. > > (*) I know that nroff was "new run off" and it came from somewhere, > MIT? Some old system, but it wasn't invented in Unix. That said, > I've never seen docs for the previous system and I kinda think Joe > took it to the next level. If you haven't studied the docs and > written macros, you should. It's a pretty neat system. > > On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 03:08:36PM -0800, Ken Thompson via TUHS wrote: >> joe was much more than that. he knew how >> to play the system. example: >> out of whole cloth, he invented a form to >> order a teletype and opx (bell labs extension) >> installed in the home. he then filled out the >> form for each of the unix-room dennisons. >> there was a phone call from a confused >> clerk, and then we all got teletypes and >> data sets at home. as an aside, the opx >> came with free watts (long distance which >> was very expensive in those days.) >> >> >> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote: >> > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, >> > and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next >> > time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. >> > >> > -- Dave > > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-28 4:48 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS @ 2018-11-28 14:44 ` Dan Cross 2018-11-28 17:08 ` Paul Winalski ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Dan Cross @ 2018-11-28 14:44 UTC (permalink / raw) To: ken; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6045 bytes --] On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 11:50 PM Ken Thompson via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote: > another joe: > > echo 1 was a 100 foot balloon that was > launched into space in the early 60s. this > was the first satellite that was easily visible > to the naked eye. > > joe wrote a set of fortran programs that > tracked the orbit of echo and calculated > the direction to look from a point on earth. > to do this, he had to learn fortran and > orbital dynamics. > > the programs were used to point antennas > to send emf from california. bouncing off > echo and received at bell labs in > new jersey. thus, thanks to joe, echo was > the first communications satellite. > > by the time i came to bell labs (1966) the > program, azel, for azimuth/elevation, was > expanded to track planets, moons, satellites, > etc. moreover, it tracked the shadow of the > earth cast by the sun (night). it could predict > within a few seconds when echo would wink > on or off as it passed through the shadow. > This is an amazing story; thanks for sharing, Ken. There is an interesting film about project ECHO on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY8MeZ6lpwI While it doesn't mention Joe Ossanna directly, there is a small part in the film where the satellite is located after being launched. Given your story, one might reasonably assume that that part of the narrative refers to Ossanna's program, albeit indirectly. Btw: I've heard that interference detected through the horn antenna at the Holmdel site lead was explained by cosmic background radiation that was attributed to the Big Bang; this apparently provided critical observational evidence that led to the acceptance of the Big Bang theory. a version of azel was maintained all the time > i was at bell labs. we used it to predict > eclipses, transits, occultations etc. when > we first got a voice synthesizer, the day's > predictions were spoken at 5pm in case > there was anything interesting. > > anyway, at 5pm on june 8, 1983 the voice > announced an "occultation of mercury" > for early the next morning. > > no one had heard of such a thing. it was > extremely rare. mercury had to be at > about its max elongation; the moon had > to be only a few hours old (or young); > it had to be dark; the moon and mercury > had to be above the horizon; and lastly, > the moon had to occult mercury. > > we all (me, lee mcmahon, dennis ritchie, > rob pike, and bob morris) frantically tried > to verify that it was real. it was, but it > would only be about 5 degrees above > the horizon facing right into new york city. > not a chance. we all went home. > > later that night we were writing to each > other and calculating that in an airplane > at 10,000 feet, the event moved up to 10 > or 15 degrees above the horizon. also, > in an airplane, we could avoid nyc. > > so at 3am, we (me, rob pike, rae mclellan) > went to the airport equipped with cameras > and binoculars. we flew north as high as the > plane would go. we might be the only > people in the world who have seen an > occultation of mercury. thank you joe. > !! That's neat. - Dan C. On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 6:57 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote: > > As a long time roff fan (I still use it, yes, I've learned LaTex, I much > > prefer roff), I'm hugely bummed that Joe left us so early. I feel like > > there would be more fun stories, like Ken's story. > > > > If I remember correctly, he wrote the first (Unix *) version of roff in > > PDP-11 assembly, right? Granted, PDP-11 assembly is perhaps the most > > pleasant assembly ever, but it is still assembly. Roff is a non-trivial > > program, I can't say that I've every written anything remotely that big > > in assembly (the only thing I'm proud of is writing swtch() in VAX, 68K, > > and some other CPU that I can't remember, but that was tiny, hard to get > > right, but tiny). I've got mad respect for what he did, I feel like the > > whole roff thing doesn't get enough respect. It wasn't just roff, though > > that started it, it was pic (I *love* pic), eqn, all the other filters > > that go down to roff. For lmbench I wrote my own grap like tools > > because grap wasn't open source. > > > > I was talking to Marc Donner, a Morgan Stanley techy (since moved on > > to google and who knows where) about why I liked roff. At the time > > I had built webroff which took roff -ms input and made websites. > > Marc pointed out that the reason I liked roff was, for the most part, > > it didn't say how to do something (that was buried in the macros), > > it said what you wanted to do. > > > > Ken, if you have more Joe stories I'd love to hear them, I feel like > > I missed out on a cool person. > > > > (*) I know that nroff was "new run off" and it came from somewhere, > > MIT? Some old system, but it wasn't invented in Unix. That said, > > I've never seen docs for the previous system and I kinda think Joe > > took it to the next level. If you haven't studied the docs and > > written macros, you should. It's a pretty neat system. > > > > On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 03:08:36PM -0800, Ken Thompson via TUHS wrote: > >> joe was much more than that. he knew how > >> to play the system. example: > >> out of whole cloth, he invented a form to > >> order a teletype and opx (bell labs extension) > >> installed in the home. he then filled out the > >> form for each of the unix-room dennisons. > >> there was a phone call from a confused > >> clerk, and then we all got teletypes and > >> data sets at home. as an aside, the opx > >> came with free watts (long distance which > >> was very expensive in those days.) > >> > >> > >> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> > wrote: > >> > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing > Unix, > >> > and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, > the next > >> > time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > >> > > >> > -- Dave > > > > -- > > --- > > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com > http://www.mcvoy.com/lm > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 7892 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-28 4:48 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS 2018-11-28 14:44 ` Dan Cross @ 2018-11-28 17:08 ` Paul Winalski 2018-11-28 19:03 ` WIlliam Cheswick 2018-11-28 19:04 ` WIlliam Cheswick 2018-11-28 17:57 ` Earl Baugh 2018-11-28 18:23 ` ron minnich 3 siblings, 2 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Paul Winalski @ 2018-11-28 17:08 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Ken Thompson; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On 11/27/18, Ken Thompson via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote: > another joe: > > echo 1 was a 100 foot balloon that was > launched into space in the early 60s. this > was the first satellite that was easily visible > to the naked eye. > > joe wrote a set of fortran programs that > tracked the orbit of echo and calculated > the direction to look from a point on earth. > to do this, he had to learn fortran and > orbital dynamics. > > by the time i came to bell labs (1966) the > program, azel, for azimuth/elevation, was > expanded to track planets, moons, satellites, > etc. moreover, it tracked the shadow of the > earth cast by the sun (night). it could predict > within a few seconds when echo would wink > on or off as it passed through the shadow. > > a version of azel was maintained all the time > i was at bell labs. we used it to predict > eclipses, transits, occultations etc. when > we first got a voice synthesizer, the day's > predictions were spoken at 5pm in case > there was anything interesting. > What a great story. There is today a website (heavens-above.com) that does the same thing as Joe's azel. Amateur Astronomers visit it regularly to get the night's predictions for visible satellite transits, visible passes of the International Space Station, etc. I had no idea the idea went back that far. -Paul W. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-28 17:08 ` Paul Winalski @ 2018-11-28 19:03 ` WIlliam Cheswick 2018-11-28 19:04 ` WIlliam Cheswick 1 sibling, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: WIlliam Cheswick @ 2018-11-28 19:03 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 821 bytes --] > On Nov 28, 2018, at 12:08 PM, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote: > >> a version of azel was maintained all the time >> i was at bell labs. we used it to predict >> eclipses, transits, occultations etc. when >> we first got a voice synthesizer, the day's >> predictions were spoken at 5pm in case >> there was anything interesting. Was this the source or inspiration for astro(1)? Ken’s astro was run daily to announce things in the Unix room, and in my home up until recently to time turning on the lights in the evening. (My home still does the Unix-room style astro announcements, but in the morning at 8:05). It is available in the Plan 9 for Unix stuff (https://codeload.github.com/9fans/plan9port/zip/master <https://codeload.github.com/9fans/plan9port/zip/master>) ches [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2196 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-28 17:08 ` Paul Winalski 2018-11-28 19:03 ` WIlliam Cheswick @ 2018-11-28 19:04 ` WIlliam Cheswick 1 sibling, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: WIlliam Cheswick @ 2018-11-28 19:04 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society >Just curious, was that voice synthesizer a votrax or some other thing? Doug, tell the Disney story! ches ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-28 4:48 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS 2018-11-28 14:44 ` Dan Cross 2018-11-28 17:08 ` Paul Winalski @ 2018-11-28 17:57 ` Earl Baugh 2018-11-28 18:23 ` ron minnich 3 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Earl Baugh @ 2018-11-28 17:57 UTC (permalink / raw) To: ken; +Cc: tuhs [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5824 bytes --] I don't know if this was just me, but the inner geek in me first thought was "How did the pictures turn out"? :-) (the second thought was "Joe is now a hero to me" even thought I didn't meet him... and this sounds sooo much like what I've done with other geeky friends in college, etc... ). An example today, I got a Bluetooth water bottle (as part of a reward for something at work) and when I set it up it needed a firmware update, which I thought was cool (and my wife just rolled her eyes...). :-) Earl On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 11:50 PM Ken Thompson via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote: > another joe: > > echo 1 was a 100 foot balloon that was > launched into space in the early 60s. this > was the first satellite that was easily visible > to the naked eye. > > joe wrote a set of fortran programs that > tracked the orbit of echo and calculated > the direction to look from a point on earth. > to do this, he had to learn fortran and > orbital dynamics. > > the programs were used to point antennas > to send emf from california. bouncing off > echo and received at bell labs in > new jersey. thus, thanks to joe, echo was > the first communications satellite. > > by the time i came to bell labs (1966) the > program, azel, for azimuth/elevation, was > expanded to track planets, moons, satellites, > etc. moreover, it tracked the shadow of the > earth cast by the sun (night). it could predict > within a few seconds when echo would wink > on or off as it passed through the shadow. > > a version of azel was maintained all the time > i was at bell labs. we used it to predict > eclipses, transits, occultations etc. when > we first got a voice synthesizer, the day's > predictions were spoken at 5pm in case > there was anything interesting. > > anyway, at 5pm on june 8, 1983 the voice > announced an "occultation of mercury" > for early the next morning. > > no one had heard of such a thing. it was > extremely rare. mercury had to be at > about its max elongation; the moon had > to be only a few hours old (or young); > it had to be dark; the moon and mercury > had to be above the horizon; and lastly, > the moon had to occult mercury. > > we all (me, lee mcmahon, dennis ritchie, > rob pike, and bob morris) frantically tried > to verify that it was real. it was, but it > would only be about 5 degrees above > the horizon facing right into new york city. > not a chance. we all went home. > > later that night we were writing to each > other and calculating that in an airplane > at 10,000 feet, the event moved up to 10 > or 15 degrees above the horizon. also, > in an airplane, we could avoid nyc. > > so at 3am, we (me, rob pike, rae mclellan) > went to the airport equipped with cameras > and binoculars. we flew north as high as the > plane would go. we might be the only > people in the world who have seen an > occultation of mercury. thank you joe. > > > On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 6:57 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote: > > As a long time roff fan (I still use it, yes, I've learned LaTex, I much > > prefer roff), I'm hugely bummed that Joe left us so early. I feel like > > there would be more fun stories, like Ken's story. > > > > If I remember correctly, he wrote the first (Unix *) version of roff in > > PDP-11 assembly, right? Granted, PDP-11 assembly is perhaps the most > > pleasant assembly ever, but it is still assembly. Roff is a non-trivial > > program, I can't say that I've every written anything remotely that big > > in assembly (the only thing I'm proud of is writing swtch() in VAX, 68K, > > and some other CPU that I can't remember, but that was tiny, hard to get > > right, but tiny). I've got mad respect for what he did, I feel like the > > whole roff thing doesn't get enough respect. It wasn't just roff, though > > that started it, it was pic (I *love* pic), eqn, all the other filters > > that go down to roff. For lmbench I wrote my own grap like tools > > because grap wasn't open source. > > > > I was talking to Marc Donner, a Morgan Stanley techy (since moved on > > to google and who knows where) about why I liked roff. At the time > > I had built webroff which took roff -ms input and made websites. > > Marc pointed out that the reason I liked roff was, for the most part, > > it didn't say how to do something (that was buried in the macros), > > it said what you wanted to do. > > > > Ken, if you have more Joe stories I'd love to hear them, I feel like > > I missed out on a cool person. > > > > (*) I know that nroff was "new run off" and it came from somewhere, > > MIT? Some old system, but it wasn't invented in Unix. That said, > > I've never seen docs for the previous system and I kinda think Joe > > took it to the next level. If you haven't studied the docs and > > written macros, you should. It's a pretty neat system. > > > > On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 03:08:36PM -0800, Ken Thompson via TUHS wrote: > >> joe was much more than that. he knew how > >> to play the system. example: > >> out of whole cloth, he invented a form to > >> order a teletype and opx (bell labs extension) > >> installed in the home. he then filled out the > >> form for each of the unix-room dennisons. > >> there was a phone call from a confused > >> clerk, and then we all got teletypes and > >> data sets at home. as an aside, the opx > >> came with free watts (long distance which > >> was very expensive in those days.) > >> > >> > >> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> > wrote: > >> > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing > Unix, > >> > and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, > the next > >> > time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > >> > > >> > -- Dave > > > > -- > > --- > > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com > http://www.mcvoy.com/lm > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 7235 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-28 4:48 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2018-11-28 17:57 ` Earl Baugh @ 2018-11-28 18:23 ` ron minnich 3 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: ron minnich @ 2018-11-28 18:23 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Ken Thompson; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Just curious, was that voice synthesizer a votrax or some other thing? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-28 2:57 ` Larry McVoy 2018-11-28 4:48 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS @ 2018-11-28 5:22 ` Fabio Scotoni 1 sibling, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Fabio Scotoni @ 2018-11-28 5:22 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: tuhs On 11/28/18 3:57 AM, Larry McVoy wrote: > (*) I know that nroff was "new run off" and it came from somewhere, > MIT? Some old system, but it wasn't invented in Unix. That said, > I've never seen docs for the previous system and I kinda think Joe > took it to the next level. If you haven't studied the docs and > written macros, you should. It's a pretty neat system. Kristaps Dzonsons actually went digging for that as part of his "History of UNIX Manpages" essay[1]. The abridged version is that roff goes back to a number of rewrites, the original being apparently RUNOFF on CTSS at MIT. Source code for RUNOFF and documentation for various parts of troff history have been preserved on that page. It looks well-researched, though I have no knowledge first hand. [1] https://manpages.bsd.lv/history.html ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-27 21:47 Dave Horsfall 2018-11-27 23:08 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS @ 2018-11-28 9:20 ` Donald ODona 2018-11-29 3:54 ` Dave Horsfall 2 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Donald ODona @ 2018-11-28 9:20 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society, dave Joe sold the (not really existent) UNIX system to the patent department of AT&T, which in turn bought the urgently needed PDP11. Without that there would be no UNIX. Without Joe there would be no UNIX. At 27 Nov 2018 21:48:51 +0000 (+00:00) from Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>: > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing > Unix, and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, > the next time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > > -- Dave ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna 2018-11-27 21:47 Dave Horsfall 2018-11-27 23:08 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS 2018-11-28 9:20 ` Donald ODona @ 2018-11-29 3:54 ` Dave Horsfall 2 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Dave Horsfall @ 2018-11-29 3:54 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Blimey! I never thought that I would get such a huge response; there's no way that I can summarise everything in a single paragraph next year, but I'll see what I can do. Thanks, JFO, for everything. -- Dave ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2019-11-30 17:54 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 23+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2019-11-27 20:53 [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna Dave Horsfall 2019-11-28 0:06 ` Warner Losh 2019-11-28 0:43 ` Finn O'Leary 2019-11-28 17:16 ` ron 2019-11-28 17:18 ` ron 2019-11-28 0:46 ` David Arnold 2019-11-28 3:43 ` Larry McVoy 2019-11-30 17:45 ` Finn O'Leary 2019-11-28 9:19 ` Thomas Paulsen -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below -- 2018-11-28 13:09 Noel Chiappa 2018-11-27 21:47 Dave Horsfall 2018-11-27 23:08 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS 2018-11-28 2:57 ` Larry McVoy 2018-11-28 4:48 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS 2018-11-28 14:44 ` Dan Cross 2018-11-28 17:08 ` Paul Winalski 2018-11-28 19:03 ` WIlliam Cheswick 2018-11-28 19:04 ` WIlliam Cheswick 2018-11-28 17:57 ` Earl Baugh 2018-11-28 18:23 ` ron minnich 2018-11-28 5:22 ` Fabio Scotoni 2018-11-28 9:20 ` Donald ODona 2018-11-29 3:54 ` Dave Horsfall
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