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* [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
@ 2020-06-14 22:52 Warren Toomey
  2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton
  2020-06-18 12:49 ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Michael Siegel
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Warren Toomey @ 2020-06-14 22:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

All, I just received this e-mail from a non-TUHS list member. If you have
an answer for Michael, could you reply to him and pop a cc here as well?

Thanks, Warren

----- Forwarded message from Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> -----

Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2020 16:37:59 +0200
From: Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net>
To: wkt@tuhs.org
Subject: Origins and life of the pg pager

Hi there,

I'm trying to find out where the pg pager originated.

The research I've done so far vaguely suggests it came with one of the
System V versions, though Internet claims it to be “the name of the
historical utility on BSD UNIX systems” occasionally.[1]

I think System V because the source code of pg.c in the util-linux
package says that this utility is “a clone of the System V CRT paging
utility.”[2]

I'd also like to find out when pg was discarded and if it ever made it
into POSIX before that. Linux still has pg to the very day, but none of
the current major BSDs (Free/Net/Open) offer it. POSIX 2001, 2004
Edition lists it as an excluded utility.[3] I've not been able to get
the text of any prior POSIX documents. It seems they aren't freely
available.

Any ideas on how to proceed?


Best
Michael


[1] This one's from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pg_(Unix)),
    but I've also found other sites stating the same.

[2]
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git/tree/text-utils/pg.c

[3] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696899/xrat/xcu_chap04.html

----- End forwarded message -----

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-14 22:52 [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager Warren Toomey
@ 2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton
  2020-06-14 23:52   ` [TUHS] " David Barto
                     ` (2 more replies)
  2020-06-18 12:49 ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Michael Siegel
  1 sibling, 3 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-06-14 23:37 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Michael Siegel; +Cc: tuhs

Eric Shienbrood at Berkeley wrote "more" around 1979, and it was the 
standard BSD pager. It was inspired by the --More-- option in the ITS 
terminal driver at MIT.

"pg" did not come from Berkeley. My recollection is that it came from 
AT&T in response to requests to include "more", which was in exptools at 
Bell Labs but not in any standard AT&T system. "pg" is not in my UNIX 
5.0 manual, but it's in my SVID with the comment "New in System V 
Release 2".

UNIX 5.0 was the AT&T internal pre-release of System V.  SVID was the 
System V Interface Definition from AT&T.

     Mary Ann

On 6/14/20 3:52 PM, Warren Toomey wrote:
> All, I just received this e-mail from a non-TUHS list member. If you have
> an answer for Michael, could you reply to him and pop a cc here as well?
>
> Thanks, Warren
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> -----
>
> Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2020 16:37:59 +0200
> From: Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net>
> To: wkt@tuhs.org
> Subject: Origins and life of the pg pager
>
> Hi there,
>
> I'm trying to find out where the pg pager originated.
>
> The research I've done so far vaguely suggests it came with one of the
> System V versions, though Internet claims it to be “the name of the
> historical utility on BSD UNIX systems” occasionally.[1]
>
> I think System V because the source code of pg.c in the util-linux
> package says that this utility is “a clone of the System V CRT paging
> utility.”[2]
>
> I'd also like to find out when pg was discarded and if it ever made it
> into POSIX before that. Linux still has pg to the very day, but none of
> the current major BSDs (Free/Net/Open) offer it. POSIX 2001, 2004
> Edition lists it as an excluded utility.[3] I've not been able to get
> the text of any prior POSIX documents. It seems they aren't freely
> available.
>
> Any ideas on how to proceed?
>
>
> Best
> Michael
>
>
> [1] This one's from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pg_(Unix)),
>      but I've also found other sites stating the same.
>
> [2]
> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git/tree/text-utils/pg.c
>
> [3] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696899/xrat/xcu_chap04.html
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton
@ 2020-06-14 23:52   ` David Barto
  2020-06-15  0:06     ` George Michaelson
  2020-06-15  0:31     ` Alan D. Salewski
  2020-06-15  0:32   ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Nemo Nusquam
  2020-06-15  5:41   ` Lars Brinkhoff
  2 siblings, 2 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: David Barto @ 2020-06-14 23:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list; +Cc: Michael Siegel

My January 1983 printing of the System V Unix* System User’s Manual doesn’t have pg in it.

And my 1986 AT&T The Unix(tm) System Users Manual for System V Release 2 also doesn’t have it.

	David

> On Jun 14, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net> wrote:
> 
> Eric Shienbrood at Berkeley wrote "more" around 1979, and it was the standard BSD pager. It was inspired by the --More-- option in the ITS terminal driver at MIT.
> 
> "pg" did not come from Berkeley. My recollection is that it came from AT&T in response to requests to include "more", which was in exptools at Bell Labs but not in any standard AT&T system. "pg" is not in my UNIX 5.0 manual, but it's in my SVID with the comment "New in System V Release 2".
> 
> UNIX 5.0 was the AT&T internal pre-release of System V.  SVID was the System V Interface Definition from AT&T.
> 
>     Mary Ann
> 
> On 6/14/20 3:52 PM, Warren Toomey wrote:
>> All, I just received this e-mail from a non-TUHS list member. If you have
>> an answer for Michael, could you reply to him and pop a cc here as well?
>> 
>> Thanks, Warren
>> 
>> ----- Forwarded message from Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> -----
>> 
>> Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2020 16:37:59 +0200
>> From: Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net>
>> To: wkt@tuhs.org
>> Subject: Origins and life of the pg pager
>> 
>> Hi there,
>> 
>> I'm trying to find out where the pg pager originated.
>> 
>> The research I've done so far vaguely suggests it came with one of the
>> System V versions, though Internet claims it to be “the name of the
>> historical utility on BSD UNIX systems” occasionally.[1]
>> 
>> I think System V because the source code of pg.c in the util-linux
>> package says that this utility is “a clone of the System V CRT paging
>> utility.”[2]
>> 
>> I'd also like to find out when pg was discarded and if it ever made it
>> into POSIX before that. Linux still has pg to the very day, but none of
>> the current major BSDs (Free/Net/Open) offer it. POSIX 2001, 2004
>> Edition lists it as an excluded utility.[3] I've not been able to get
>> the text of any prior POSIX documents. It seems they aren't freely
>> available.
>> 
>> Any ideas on how to proceed?
>> 
>> 
>> Best
>> Michael
>> 
>> 
>> [1] This one's from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pg_(Unix)),
>>     but I've also found other sites stating the same.
>> 
>> [2]
>> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git/tree/text-utils/pg.c
>> 
>> [3] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696899/xrat/xcu_chap04.html
>> 
>> ----- End forwarded message -----


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-14 23:52   ` [TUHS] " David Barto
@ 2020-06-15  0:06     ` George Michaelson
  2020-06-15  0:31     ` Alan D. Salewski
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: George Michaelson @ 2020-06-15  0:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

I recently found myself wanting a pager which respected ^L formfeed page throw.

looks like when people wrote pagers, they were seeking to reject the
tyranny of the paper formalism. None of the current set recognize it
as a marker worthy of pause.

The thing is, that now we are not bound by formalisms of page size, it
turns out the semantic intent of a page throw might be .. useful.

-G

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-14 23:52   ` [TUHS] " David Barto
  2020-06-15  0:06     ` George Michaelson
@ 2020-06-15  0:31     ` Alan D. Salewski
  2020-06-15  0:35       ` Alan D. Salewski
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Alan D. Salewski @ 2020-06-15  0:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: Michael Siegel

I first encountered 'pg' on an IBM RT[0] running AIX 2.x, whose wikipedia
page[1] describes it this way:

    "AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible extensions"

-Al

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC

On 2020-06-14 16:52:45, David Barto spake thus:
> My January 1983 printing of the System V Unix* System User’s Manual doesn’t have pg in it.
> 
> And my 1986 AT&T The Unix(tm) System Users Manual for System V Release 2 also doesn’t have it.
> 
> 	David
> 
> > On Jun 14, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net> wrote:
> > 
> > Eric Shienbrood at Berkeley wrote "more" around 1979, and it was the standard BSD pager. It was inspired by the --More-- option in the ITS terminal driver at MIT.
> > 
> > "pg" did not come from Berkeley. My recollection is that it came from AT&T in response to requests to include "more", which was in exptools at Bell Labs but not in any standard AT&T system. "pg" is not in my UNIX 5.0 manual, but it's in my SVID with the comment "New in System V Release 2".
> > 
> > UNIX 5.0 was the AT&T internal pre-release of System V.  SVID was the System V Interface Definition from AT&T.
> > 
> >     Mary Ann
> > 
> > On 6/14/20 3:52 PM, Warren Toomey wrote:
> >> All, I just received this e-mail from a non-TUHS list member. If you have
> >> an answer for Michael, could you reply to him and pop a cc here as well?
> >> 
> >> Thanks, Warren
> >> 
> >> ----- Forwarded message from Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> -----
> >> 
> >> Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2020 16:37:59 +0200
> >> From: Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net>
> >> To: wkt@tuhs.org
> >> Subject: Origins and life of the pg pager
> >> 
> >> Hi there,
> >> 
> >> I'm trying to find out where the pg pager originated.
> >> 
> >> The research I've done so far vaguely suggests it came with one of the
> >> System V versions, though Internet claims it to be “the name of the
> >> historical utility on BSD UNIX systems” occasionally.[1]
> >> 
> >> I think System V because the source code of pg.c in the util-linux
> >> package says that this utility is “a clone of the System V CRT paging
> >> utility.”[2]
> >> 
> >> I'd also like to find out when pg was discarded and if it ever made it
> >> into POSIX before that. Linux still has pg to the very day, but none of
> >> the current major BSDs (Free/Net/Open) offer it. POSIX 2001, 2004
> >> Edition lists it as an excluded utility.[3] I've not been able to get
> >> the text of any prior POSIX documents. It seems they aren't freely
> >> available.
> >> 
> >> Any ideas on how to proceed?
> >> 
> >> 
> >> Best
> >> Michael
> >> 
> >> 
> >> [1] This one's from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pg_(Unix)),
> >>     but I've also found other sites stating the same.
> >> 
> >> [2]
> >> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git/tree/text-utils/pg.c
> >> 
> >> [3] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696899/xrat/xcu_chap04.html
> >> 
> >> ----- End forwarded message -----
> 

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
a l a n   d.   s a l e w s k i                   salewski@att.net
1024D/FA2C3588 EDFA 195F EDF1 0933 1002  6396 7C92 5CB3 FA2C 3588
-----------------------------------------------------------------

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton
  2020-06-14 23:52   ` [TUHS] " David Barto
@ 2020-06-15  0:32   ` Nemo Nusquam
  2020-06-15  5:41   ` Lars Brinkhoff
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Nemo Nusquam @ 2020-06-15  0:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

For what it's worth, the OpenSolaris pg.c 
(https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=OpenSolaris_b135/cmd/pg/pg.c) 
contains the following:

/*
  * Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
  * Use is subject to license terms.
  */

/*    Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T    */
/*      All Rights Reserved      */

N.

On 06/14/20 19:37, Mary Ann Horton wrote:
> Eric Shienbrood at Berkeley wrote "more" around 1979, and it was the 
> standard BSD pager. It was inspired by the --More-- option in the ITS 
> terminal driver at MIT.
>
> "pg" did not come from Berkeley. My recollection is that it came from 
> AT&T in response to requests to include "more", which was in exptools 
> at Bell Labs but not in any standard AT&T system. "pg" is not in my 
> UNIX 5.0 manual, but it's in my SVID with the comment "New in System V 
> Release 2".
>
> UNIX 5.0 was the AT&T internal pre-release of System V.  SVID was the 
> System V Interface Definition from AT&T.
>
>     Mary Ann
>
> On 6/14/20 3:52 PM, Warren Toomey wrote:
>> All, I just received this e-mail from a non-TUHS list member. If you 
>> have
>> an answer for Michael, could you reply to him and pop a cc here as well?
>>
>> Thanks, Warren
>>
>> ----- Forwarded message from Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> -----
>>
>> Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2020 16:37:59 +0200
>> From: Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net>
>> To: wkt@tuhs.org
>> Subject: Origins and life of the pg pager
>>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I'm trying to find out where the pg pager originated.
>>
>> The research I've done so far vaguely suggests it came with one of the
>> System V versions, though Internet claims it to be “the name of the
>> historical utility on BSD UNIX systems” occasionally.[1]
>>
>> I think System V because the source code of pg.c in the util-linux
>> package says that this utility is “a clone of the System V CRT paging
>> utility.”[2]
>>
>> I'd also like to find out when pg was discarded and if it ever made it
>> into POSIX before that. Linux still has pg to the very day, but none of
>> the current major BSDs (Free/Net/Open) offer it. POSIX 2001, 2004
>> Edition lists it as an excluded utility.[3] I've not been able to get
>> the text of any prior POSIX documents. It seems they aren't freely
>> available.
>>
>> Any ideas on how to proceed?
>>
>>
>> Best
>> Michael
>>
>>
>> [1] This one's from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pg_(Unix)),
>>      but I've also found other sites stating the same.
>>
>> [2]
>> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git/tree/text-utils/pg.c 
>>
>>
>> [3] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696899/xrat/xcu_chap04.html
>>
>> ----- End forwarded message -----


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  0:31     ` Alan D. Salewski
@ 2020-06-15  0:35       ` Alan D. Salewski
  2020-06-15  1:38         ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Alan D. Salewski @ 2020-06-15  0:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: Michael Siegel

[missed a footnote; fixed]

On 2020-06-14 20:31:13, Alan D. Salewski spake thus:
> I first encountered 'pg' on an IBM RT[0] running AIX 2.x, whose wikipedia
> page[1] describes it this way:
> 
>     "AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible extensions"
> 
> -Al
> 
> [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
a l a n   d.   s a l e w s k i                   salewski@att.net
1024D/FA2C3588 EDFA 195F EDF1 0933 1002  6396 7C92 5CB3 FA2C 3588
-----------------------------------------------------------------

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  0:35       ` Alan D. Salewski
@ 2020-06-15  1:38         ` Warner Losh
  2020-06-15  1:47           ` Larry McVoy
                             ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2020-06-15  1:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2456 bytes --]

Here's what I've found:

There's a pg.c, starting in System Vr2. R1 didn't have it.

It changed in a number of fussy ways, but nothing substantial.

It grew that copyright notice in SVr3, but the sun one quoted is missing
/*     Copyright (c) 1990, 1991 UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. */
that should have been there to, suggesting it was snagged between r2 and r3.

There's also two other copies of pg as well. There's one in 32V. Though a
quick diff suggests little in common with the System Vr2 version.

There's also one in the BRL/JHU pdp-11 version of unix that is nearly
identical to the System Vr2 one. Though it's dated 1985 while the SVr2 one
is 1983. Both with a 1984 copyright by AT&T.

SunOS 4.1.3 shipped with the System Vr2 version. in 5bin.

Irix 6.5.5 had what looks like the System Vr3 copy in it, though I didn't
delve into it.

So this supports the recollections here that it was from System Vr2...

However, there's also a Doug Gwen version from the Delaware 1980 Usenix
tape submitted by geotronics and on other tapes. Haven't delved on what
makes these different from each other though.

There's one in the NOSC unix we have in the archive, unrelated, it seems to
either of these. It's dated in 1979.

There's still another one on the UNSW tapes from 1978 by Sape Mullender
Informatics staff Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Also independent. It's on
the 4th tape we have in the archive.

10th edition also has pg.c, but it's an I/O pager for the kernel.

Which explains another comment in the System Vr2 one:
 *      Note:   The reason that there are so many commands to do
 *              the same types of things is to try to accommodate
 *              users of other paginators.

Warner

On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 6:36 PM Alan D. Salewski <salewski@att.net> wrote:

> [missed a footnote; fixed]
>
> On 2020-06-14 20:31:13, Alan D. Salewski spake thus:
> > I first encountered 'pg' on an IBM RT[0] running AIX 2.x, whose wikipedia
> > page[1] describes it this way:
> >
> >     "AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible extensions"
> >
> > -Al
> >
> > [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> a l a n   d.   s a l e w s k i                   salewski@att.net
> 1024D/FA2C3588 EDFA 195F EDF1 0933 1002  6396 7C92 5CB3 FA2C 3588
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3550 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  1:38         ` Warner Losh
@ 2020-06-15  1:47           ` Larry McVoy
  2020-06-15  2:38             ` Alec Muffett
  2020-06-15  2:26           ` Charles H. Sauer
  2020-06-15 14:03           ` Mary Ann Horton
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2020-06-15  1:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Warner Losh; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 07:38:38PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> SunOS 4.1.3 shipped with the System Vr2 version. in 5bin.

Yeah, but nobody used it.  pg was not invented here in a nutshell.  more(1)
was fine, less(1) was actually an improvement.  pg(1) was a shitty also ran.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  1:38         ` Warner Losh
  2020-06-15  1:47           ` Larry McVoy
@ 2020-06-15  2:26           ` Charles H. Sauer
  2020-06-15 14:03           ` Mary Ann Horton
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Charles H. Sauer @ 2020-06-15  2:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Warner Losh; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3411 bytes --]

My memory is that pg was “always” in AIX for the RT. The group of us that worked on BSD convergence deprecated pg in favor of more, if I recall correctly. So far I don’t know how to verify any of this.

It is also my memory that PC/IX (Sys III-based?) had pg. If so, ISC may have also included similar pg in both early AIX and PC/IX.

Charlie

> On Jun 14, 2020, at 8:38 PM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
> 
> Here's what I've found:
> 
> There's a pg.c, starting in System Vr2. R1 didn't have it.
> 
> It changed in a number of fussy ways, but nothing substantial.
> 
> It grew that copyright notice in SVr3, but the sun one quoted is missing
> /*     Copyright (c) 1990, 1991 UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. */
> that should have been there to, suggesting it was snagged between r2 and r3.
> 
> There's also two other copies of pg as well. There's one in 32V. Though a quick diff suggests little in common with the System Vr2 version.
> 
> There's also one in the BRL/JHU pdp-11 version of unix that is nearly identical to the System Vr2 one. Though it's dated 1985 while the SVr2 one is 1983. Both with a 1984 copyright by AT&T.
> 
> SunOS 4.1.3 shipped with the System Vr2 version. in 5bin.
> 
> Irix 6.5.5 had what looks like the System Vr3 copy in it, though I didn't delve into it.
> 
> So this supports the recollections here that it was from System Vr2...
> 
> However, there's also a Doug Gwen version from the Delaware 1980 Usenix tape submitted by geotronics and on other tapes. Haven't delved on what makes these different from each other though.
> 
> There's one in the NOSC unix we have in the archive, unrelated, it seems to either of these. It's dated in 1979.
> 
> There's still another one on the UNSW tapes from 1978 by Sape Mullender Informatics staff Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Also independent. It's on the 4th tape we have in the archive.
> 
> 10th edition also has pg.c, but it's an I/O pager for the kernel.
> 
> Which explains another comment in the System Vr2 one:
>  *      Note:   The reason that there are so many commands to do
>  *              the same types of things is to try to accommodate
>  *              users of other paginators.
> 
> Warner
> 
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 6:36 PM Alan D. Salewski <salewski@att.net <mailto:salewski@att.net>> wrote:
> [missed a footnote; fixed]
> 
> On 2020-06-14 20:31:13, Alan D. Salewski spake thus:
> > I first encountered 'pg' on an IBM RT[0] running AIX 2.x, whose wikipedia
> > page[1] describes it this way:
> > 
> >     "AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible extensions"
> > 
> > -Al
> > 
> > [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC>
> 
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX>
> 
> -- 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> a l a n   d.   s a l e w s k i                   salewski@att.net <mailto:salewski@att.net>
> 1024D/FA2C3588 EDFA 195F EDF1 0933 1002  6396 7C92 5CB3 FA2C 3588
> -----------------------------------------------------------------

--
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* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  1:47           ` Larry McVoy
@ 2020-06-15  2:38             ` Alec Muffett
  2020-06-15  2:46               ` Alec Muffett
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Alec Muffett @ 2020-06-15  2:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

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On Mon, 15 Jun 2020, 02:48 Larry McVoy, <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

>
> Yeah, but nobody used it.  pg was not invented here in a nutshell.  more(1)
> was fine, less(1) was actually an improvement.  pg(1) was a shitty also
> ran.


I thought that the whole point of "pg" was that it was a print system
filter; that you integrated it into pipelines to throw proper formfeeds
every 66 (etc) lines rather than print over the margins of DECWriters
(etc), and that it wasn't really a tool for humans.

At least, that's how it was explained to me.

-a

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* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  2:38             ` Alec Muffett
@ 2020-06-15  2:46               ` Alec Muffett
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Alec Muffett @ 2020-06-15  2:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

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On Mon, 15 Jun 2020, 03:38 Alec Muffett, <alec.muffett@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Jun 2020, 02:48 Larry McVoy, <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote.
>
> I thought that the whole point of "pg" was that it was a print system
> filter; that you integrated it into pipelines to throw proper formfeeds
> every 66 (etc) lines rather than print over the margins of DECWriters
> (etc), and that it wasn't really a tool for humans.
>

Okay, I just checked, that was "pr". My bad.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton
  2020-06-14 23:52   ` [TUHS] " David Barto
  2020-06-15  0:32   ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Nemo Nusquam
@ 2020-06-15  5:41   ` Lars Brinkhoff
  2020-06-15 13:56     ` Clem Cole
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-06-15  5:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Mary Ann Horton; +Cc: tuhs, Michael Siegel

Mary Ann Horton wrote:
> Eric Shienbrood at Berkeley wrote "more" around 1979, and it was the
> standard BSD pager. It was inspired by the --More-- option in the ITS
> terminal driver at MIT.

Daniel Halbert wrote to comp.society.folklore in 1994:

  "I was a first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley in 1978. I had
  been an undergraduate at MIT, and had used the ITS timesharing systems
  there, which ran on PDP-10's. ITS put a "--MORE--" at the bottom of
  the screen when one typed out files [..]

  So I wrote a simple "cr3"-like program, but had it print "--More--"
  instead of ringing the bell. I had it accept space instead of carriage
  return to continue, because that was what I was used to from ITS."

Wikipedia says "more" was written by Daniel Halbert and expanded by Eric
Shienbrood and Geoff Peck.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  5:41   ` Lars Brinkhoff
@ 2020-06-15 13:56     ` Clem Cole
  2020-06-15 14:15       ` Mary Ann Horton
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-06-15 13:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Lars Brinkhoff; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

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First, as for pg(1) itself, I thought it came from one of the non-Research
labs, like Holmdel or Indian Hill.   I certainly remember using it on AT&T
based system before System V arrived on the scene.   It's possible, tjk had
it from USG, but I think it's more likely I saw it from someone like Phil
Karn.  We also had pg(1) at Tek until I was introduced to more(1) probably
originally from Jim Kleckner and the CAD folks [which worked better and
pg(1) -- which means I probably brought pg(1) to Tek, unless it came from
one the Purdue folks like Ward, I don't remember].     I also know pg(1)
was available for PWB 3.0 at some point, as we had it at Masscomp before we
got System V and we had it the AT&T 'universe' but I don't remember the
provenance of that code (again I could have brought it with me, but I think
it came to Masscomp via MIT).   That said, Warren's PWB 3.0/SYS III source
tree does not show binary or source, which makes the thought that it was
AT&T based, but originated at a lab other than Summit or MH.

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 1:41 AM Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org> wrote:

> Daniel Halbert wrote to comp.society.folklore in 1994:
>   "I was a first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley in 1978. I had
>   been an undergraduate at MIT, and had used the ITS timesharing systems
>   there, which ran on PDP-10's. ITS put a "--MORE--" at the bottom of
>   the screen when one typed out files [..]
>
I believe that to be true.

Wikipedia says "more" was written by Daniel Halbert and expanded by
Eric Shienbrood
> and Geoff Peck.
>
I also believe that is partially true and Mary Ann is actually correct in
the provenance.

I think Eric arrived later than Dan (maybe a year later), but was also
ex-MIT, and he too had used/seen --MORE-- on ITS as Dan had.  But I was
under the impression Eric started over.  Then a few years after Eric, Geoff
worked with Eric's sources to add a few features.  As for starting
over/hacking on the program from Dan's original code base, it's hard to
call that one, as  I recall that Dan's version was not much more than a
hack on to cat(1). i.e. the original version was pretty simple, and I don't
remember that it 'knew' about the type of terminal being used, get info
from TERMCAP *et al*.  [My intro to Dan's version was at Tek, BTW but was
quickly replaced with Eric's TERMCAP version which I think I got from Mary
Ann, but might have also been via the CAD connection - we in TekLabs had
written all of the TERMCAP support for the Tek 4025 and family and I was
working to get it all back into the UCB database, so we got a bunch of
early PDP-11 based TERMCAP/curses code to help debug things since the 4025
supported some interesting modes].

To be fair, ITS and Dan certainly should get credit for introducing the
idea of the terminal pager to UCB, but it really was Eric that created the
more(1) program framework that took off and eventually did begat less(1),
pg(1), p(1) and others.    As for less(1) itself, the Gnu folks seem to
have started with Geoff's version (which I think is the version in 4.2 BSD
if you look at SCCS delta in Kurt's disks), with the biggest addition was
for the user to be able to go backward and look at some of the text that
had already scrolled off the page.   But as pointed out elsewhere, after
the Gnu folks had peed all over it; as Doug says, (and I suspect most of us
agree) it really became a sort of lesson in featuritis.


But as discussed on many things in the historical computer world,
more/less/pg/p often comes back to taste ->  more(1) and p(1) were much
more directed a doing one job well.   As Larry says, there are features of
less(1) which can be handy depending on your environment -- if you don't
have a window manager/BLIT or today's user interfaces with unlimited
scrolling (*i.e. *still on an ADM3A or VT-100), then many of the features
of less(1) probably are considered a nice to have, you got used to them and
it became your standard [burned in the ROMs in your fingers like csh(1) and
vi(1) into my own].  But as Rob and Doug have pointed out, p(1) is more
than sufficient and the 'extras' that programs like less(1) in a modern and
clean environment start having doubtful long term value.   Certainly, the
'cost' in complexity and 'code bloat' seems like a poor trade-off.  But the
assumption to me is that the desire for those type of features are
fulfilled with different tools in the current world, but if you grew up
with using them (say like Larry) I can see the value.

Clem

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* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  1:38         ` Warner Losh
  2020-06-15  1:47           ` Larry McVoy
  2020-06-15  2:26           ` Charles H. Sauer
@ 2020-06-15 14:03           ` Mary Ann Horton
  2020-06-15 20:19             ` Greg A. Woods
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-06-15 14:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

My 32V manual does not include pg.

We got UNIX/32V at Berkeley shortly after we got our Vax and decided we 
didn't like VMS. Early 1979, I think. If it had had pg, Eric probably 
wouldn't have written more.

So if there was a pg in 32V, it must have been added later.

     Mary Ann

On 6/14/20 6:38 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
> There's also two other copies of pg as well. There's one in 32V. 
> Though a quick diff suggests little in common with the System Vr2 version.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 13:56     ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-06-15 14:15       ` Mary Ann Horton
  2020-06-15 14:56         ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-06-15 14:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole, Lars Brinkhoff; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

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Hmm. Clem has a far richer recollection than I do. I don't recall Dan's 
version, but I defer to Clem.

I do have a vague recollection of a program called cr3 intended to mimic 
the tty driver thing. Perhaps that was Dan's version.

I note that my 4.1BSD manual more(1) says the author is "Eric 
Shienbrood, minor revisions by John Foderaro and Geoffrey Peck."

On 6/15/20 6:56 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>     Wikipedia says "more" was written by Daniel Halbert and expanded
>     by EricShienbrood and Geoff Peck.
>
> I also believe that is partially true and Mary Ann is actually correct 
> in the provenance.
>
> I think Eric arrived later than Dan (maybe a year later), but was also 
> ex-MIT, and he too had used/seen --MORE-- on ITS as Dan had.  But I 
> was under the impression Eric started over. Then a few years after 
> Eric, Geoff worked with Eric's sources to add a few features. As for 
> starting over/hacking on the program from Dan's original code base, 
> it's hard to call that one, as  I recall that Dan's version was not 
> much more than a hack on to cat(1). i.e. the original version was 
> pretty simple, and I don't remember that it 'knew' about the type of 
> terminal being used, get info from TERMCAP /et al/.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 14:15       ` Mary Ann Horton
@ 2020-06-15 14:56         ` Clem Cole
  2020-06-15 15:04           ` Richard Salz
                             ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-06-15 14:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Mary Ann Horton; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

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On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 10:15 AM Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net> wrote:

> Hmm. Clem has a far richer recollection than I do. I don't recall Dan's
> version, but I defer to Clem.
>
> I do have a vague recollection of a program called cr3 intended to mimic
> the tty driver thing. Perhaps that was Dan's version.
>
You know, indeed it might have been called cr3 originally.   We used it for
such a short time.  I just remember we had something that was an
alternative to pg(1), there was something different about it, maybe it
better used the try driver's canonical modes, I really don't remember.  I
do remember when the TERMCAP based more(1) showed up, we all switched to it
overnight.

Funny, when Steve Zimmerman was at Masscomp, one of the things he did was
put the ITS style 'more' into the TTY driver (along with Tenex style ^T),
both of which  I loved having until I went to Stellar -- it was always on
my list of things that would be cool.   But we had window managers by then,
and we never thought adding more into the TTY driver it was worth it.   The
truth is, either put it in the driver as a base feature so everything that
runs gets support for it without having to remember to add it to the
pipeline, or solves the problem more globally like a window manager does.
 I can see good arguments to both schemes -- that later is a tad more
elegant and see seems simpler / less complex (Doug's rules).  In fact, we
have lived with that style of solution for years, but ... I still need to
use more(1) even with a window manager/terminal emulator that allows me to
scroll 'forever' [I don't need many of the features of less(1)], but
something like p/pg/more does seem to be desirable.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 14:56         ` Clem Cole
@ 2020-06-15 15:04           ` Richard Salz
  2020-06-15 16:14             ` Clem Cole
  2020-06-15 15:45           ` Lars Brinkhoff
  2020-06-21 18:49           ` Michael Siegel
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Richard Salz @ 2020-06-15 15:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

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>
> Funny, when Steve Zimmerman was at Masscomp, one of the things he did was
> put the ITS style 'more' into the TTY driver (along with Tenex style ^T)
>

Did Steve go to UofMD?  They were big on those things.  (I seem to recall a
patch adding it to Pyramid)

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 14:56         ` Clem Cole
  2020-06-15 15:04           ` Richard Salz
@ 2020-06-15 15:45           ` Lars Brinkhoff
  2020-06-15 19:08             ` Lars Brinkhoff
  2020-06-21 18:49           ` Michael Siegel
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-06-15 15:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

Clem Cole wrote:
> I think Eric arrived later than Dan (maybe a year later), but was also
> ex-MIT, and he too had used/seen --MORE-- on ITS as Dan had. But I was
> under the impression Eric started over.

That's not what Dan writes (see below), but I'll ask him to confirm his
version.


Clem Cole wrote:
> Mary Ann Horton wrote:
>> I do have a vague recollection of a program called cr3 intended to
>> mimic the tty driver thing. Perhaps that was Dan's version.
>
> You know, indeed it might have been called cr3 originally.

Dan's full account is on his web site here:

https://danhalbert.org/more.html

He writes he was not happy with cr3 and wrote more to replace it.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 15:04           ` Richard Salz
@ 2020-06-15 16:14             ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2020-06-15 16:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Richard Salz; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

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No, that the same Steve Zimmerman was (is) and MIT type (he is also the
'Zimmerman' of EMACS fame.

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 11:04 AM Richard Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:

> Funny, when Steve Zimmerman was at Masscomp, one of the things he did was
>> put the ITS style 'more' into the TTY driver (along with Tenex style ^T)
>>
>
> Did Steve go to UofMD?  They were big on those things.  (I seem to recall
> a patch adding it to Pyramid)
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 15:45           ` Lars Brinkhoff
@ 2020-06-15 19:08             ` Lars Brinkhoff
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-06-15 19:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel

> Clem Cole wrote:
>> I think Eric arrived later than Dan (maybe a year later), but was also
>> ex-MIT, and he too had used/seen --MORE-- on ITS as Dan had. But I was
>> under the impression Eric started over.
> That's not what Dan writes (see below), but I'll ask him to confirm his
> version.

He responded and asked me to post his reply to the mailing list:

   As described in https://danhalbert.org/more.html, I wrote the
   original version of more. It was only a page or two or code, and was
   meant to replace the dysfunctional cr3. It went into raw mode so it
   could read a space as a "next page" character, but otherwise didn't
   care about what kind of terminal it was on. (The ADM-3's (not 3A's)
   were barely a terminal.)

   Clem Cole's timeline is a bit off. Eric Shienbrood, Geoff Peck, and I
   all arrived at Berkeley at the same time in fall 1978 as CS grad
   students, and became friends (along with some other folks).

   After I wrote the first version, I did not have time to continue to
   working on it, so Eric picked it up and added many more features. My
   contribution is that I had the original idea (to replace cr3) and
   coined the name, and made the very first version. I am grateful to
   Eric, Geoff, and others taking it much further with many more
   features.

   I am still in touch with Eric, and will ask him to see what he has to
   say. We are both still alive so I appreciate Lars getting in touch
   with me to verify.

   I also wrote a hack less as a joke, which was more except that it
   scrolled up the screen rather than down . I think it was Bill Joy who
   then wrote another less that paged from the end of the file (and also
   scrolled up the screen).

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 14:03           ` Mary Ann Horton
@ 2020-06-15 20:19             ` Greg A. Woods
  2020-06-15 20:50               ` Mary Ann Horton
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Greg A. Woods @ 2020-06-15 20:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

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At Mon, 15 Jun 2020 07:03:53 -0700, Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net> wrote:
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
>
> My 32V manual does not include pg.
>
> We got UNIX/32V at Berkeley shortly after we got our Vax and decided
> we didn't like VMS. Early 1979, I think. If it had had pg, Eric
> probably wouldn't have written more.
>
> So if there was a pg in 32V, it must have been added later.

There is a /usr/src/cmd/pg.c and /usr/bin/pg binary in Unix-32V, but no
manual page.  The pg.c I've seen has the date Nov. 5, 1978.  It uses
newline to proceed one page, '/' or control-Y to restart from the
beginning, '-' or '_' to move back one page (via a 16kb buffer), and '!'
to start a sub-shell.  It prints 20 lines at a time with a formfeed
between each page.  The error message about failing to open a file is
prefixed by "dk:" suggesting it may have had a different name at one
point.

There was also of course a pg.c on the 1980 and 1981 Usenix tapes, and
on the 1983 tape a pg.1l manual page accompanies it.  It was written by
D. A. Gwyn starting sometime before June 1980.  It is unique amongst
programs called "pg".

The pg.c in System V Release 2 has an sccsid of 1.5 (but no date), so
may or may not have evolved from the one in 32V -- however it operates
quite differently and the source doesn't appear to bear any noticeable
resemblance.  The source for this one remains quite recognizable in all
System V derivatives, right up to OpenSolaris.

--
					Greg A. Woods <gwoods@acm.org>

Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>     Avoncote Farms <woods@avoncote.ca>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 20:19             ` Greg A. Woods
@ 2020-06-15 20:50               ` Mary Ann Horton
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-06-15 20:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

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Fascinating.

My UNIX/32V manual, from Berkeley, bears the date "December, 1978" on 
the cover. I've hand-written "Unix/32V" on it.

The 32V archive on minnie.tuhs.org bears the date "February, 1979" in 
/usr/man/man0/title.

The text of the cover sheets is somewhat different.  My copy is "UNIX 
PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL / Seventh Edition / VAX-11 Version" compared to TUHS 
"UNIX/32V PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL / Version 1.0".

I also note there is no pg.c in the 3BSD distribution.

It seems likely that what Berkeley based 3BSD on was a prerelease of 
UNIX/32V, prior to the "official" 1.0 version, and what while pg.c was 
written in November, it didn't make it onto the tape we got at Berkeley.

Imagine if pg.c had been on that tape! more might never have been 
written. (Of course, we all read TFM, so we might have missed the source 
code all by its lonesome.)

     Mary Ann

On 6/15/20 1:19 PM, Greg A. Woods wrote:
>> My 32V manual does not include pg.
>>
>> We got UNIX/32V at Berkeley shortly after we got our Vax and decided
>> we didn't like VMS. Early 1979, I think. If it had had pg, Eric
>> probably wouldn't have written more.
>>
>> So if there was a pg in 32V, it must have been added later.
> There is a /usr/src/cmd/pg.c and /usr/bin/pg binary in Unix-32V, but no
> manual page.  The pg.c I've seen has the date Nov. 5, 1978.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-14 22:52 [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager Warren Toomey
  2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton
@ 2020-06-18 12:49 ` Michael Siegel
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Michael Siegel @ 2020-06-18 12:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Hello everyone,

now that I'm subscribed to this list as well, first let me say thank you
for all the info on pg(1) you've provided. I really wasn't expecting
that much.

The only thing I'm able to add here is that, shortly after I had sent my
question to Warren, I discovered that the Rationale section in the POSIX
description of more(1) explicitly says:

  The more utility, available in BSD and BSD-derived systems, was chosen
  as the prototype for the POSIX file display program since it is more
  widely available than either the public-domain program less or than
  pg, a pager provided in System V.[1]

This also strongly suggests that pg(1) never made it into POSIX. Well,
if I'm not mistaken, that quote actually says that pg(1) didn't make it
into POSIX.


Michael


[1]
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/more.html#tag_20_81_18

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 14:56         ` Clem Cole
  2020-06-15 15:04           ` Richard Salz
  2020-06-15 15:45           ` Lars Brinkhoff
@ 2020-06-21 18:49           ` Michael Siegel
  2020-06-22  0:35             ` Greg A. Woods
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Michael Siegel @ 2020-06-21 18:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Am 15.06.20 um 16:56 schrieb Clem Cole:

> Funny, when Steve Zimmerman was at Masscomp, one of the things he did
> was put the ITS style 'more' into the TTY driver (along with Tenex
> style ^T), both of which  I loved having until I went to Stellar --
> it was always on my list of things that would be cool.   But we had
> window managers by then, and we never thought adding more into the
> TTY driver it was worth it.   The truth is, either put it in the
> driver as a base feature so everything that runs gets support for it
> without having to remember to add it to the pipeline, or solves the
> problem more globally like a window manager does. I can see good
> arguments to both schemes -- that later is a tad more elegant and see
> seems simpler / less complex (Doug's rules).  In fact, we have lived
> with that style of solution for years, but ... I still need to use
> more(1) even with a window manager/terminal emulator that allows me
> to scroll 'forever' [I don't need many of the features of less(1)],
> but something like p/pg/more does seem to be desirable.

From my perspective as a user, I would love to see paging built in.
Having to use pagers to view terminal output conveniently is, in my
opinion, a major nuisance.

In fact, my question about the origin and life of pg(1) arose while
writing a yet unfinished addendum to a blog article that details my
failed attempt to hack together a solution for auto-paged ls(1).[1]

The conclusion there was: Those attempts (you can find them in quite a
few places throughout the Web) are futile, just pipe to a pager when you
need it.

However, there's no need to write out "less" every time. You can just
alias that to "pg" without causing any harm and save two letters, which
is an improvement for a task that is performed manually rather often.


Michael

[1] https://www.msiism.org/blog/2019/07/17/no_fun_with_auto-paged_ls.html


PS: I hope it's okay that I chose to reply just to the list address and
take all the other addresses out. If not, please let me know.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-21 18:49           ` Michael Siegel
@ 2020-06-22  0:35             ` Greg A. Woods
  2020-06-22 16:24               ` Derek Fawcus
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Greg A. Woods @ 2020-06-22  0:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2516 bytes --]

At Sun, 21 Jun 2020 20:49:31 +0200, Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> wrote:
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
>
> In fact, my question about the origin and life of pg(1) arose while
> writing a yet unfinished addendum to a blog article that details my
> failed attempt to hack together a solution for auto-paged ls(1).[1]
>
> The conclusion there was: Those attempts (you can find them in quite a
> few places throughout the Web) are futile, just pipe to a pager when you
> need it.

Indeed!  Just pipe to a pager when you need to!

There's also the benefit use of a modern "terminal" gives, e.g. Xterm:

(a) on a modern screen it can display a whole lot more than an
    old-fashioned 24x80 terminal;

(b) it offers a scroll-back buffer so if you get somewhat more output
    than expected you can just scroll back a bit to scan through it all.

Such features further reduce the need for any pager.

In a related vein what annoys me are so-called modern programs like
"git", "hg", and others which default to always piping their output
through $PAGER, along with such things as colour decorations enabled,
but when you tack on "|$PAGER" to their command-line then they turn off
the decorations!  They cause me to have to undo decades of finger
memory.

> However, there's no need to write out "less" every time. You can just
> alias that to "pg" without causing any harm and save two letters, which
> is an improvement for a task that is performed manually rather often.

I've used an alias and/or shell function called "ds" (for display) since
approximately forever, typically to invoke whatever I've set $PAGER to,
at least in more recent times.

Others I've know have called it just "p", and indeed there's been a
pager called just "p" in Research Unix since the Eighth Edition (and in
8th Edition the manual page suggests is also known as "more" and by 10th
Edition the manual adds "pg" too, though it's not installed directly
with those aliases by the makefile).

I've stuck with "ds", partly for finger memory, and also partly because
it is for the most part unique (at least in all environments I've
typically used).  That gives me the option of using a pager called "pg"
directly should I want to, while getting my "default" favourite pager
(from those available on a given system) when I use "ds".

--
					Greg A. Woods <gwoods@acm.org>

Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>     Avoncote Farms <woods@avoncote.ca>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-22  0:35             ` Greg A. Woods
@ 2020-06-22 16:24               ` Derek Fawcus
  2020-06-22 21:33                 ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Derek Fawcus @ 2020-06-22 16:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 05:35:28PM -0700, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> 
> In a related vein what annoys me are so-called modern programs like
> "git", "hg", and others which default to always piping their output
> through $PAGER, along with such things as colour decorations enabled,
> but when you tack on "|$PAGER" to their command-line then they turn off
> the decorations!  They cause me to have to undo decades of finger
> memory.

Well, for further fun, one could always export GIT_PAGER=cat,
then git will not use a pager for those commands, recognising that
'cat' is a no-op in such cases.  :-)

DF

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-22 16:24               ` Derek Fawcus
@ 2020-06-22 21:33                 ` Rob Pike
  2020-06-22 21:58                   ` Kurt H Maier
  2020-06-22 21:59                   ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-06-22 21:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Derek Fawcus; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 807 bytes --]

There is only one correct way.


% grep PAGER .bashrc

export PAGER='col -b'

%


-rob



On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 2:26 AM Derek Fawcus <
dfawcus+lists-tuhs@employees.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 05:35:28PM -0700, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> >
> > In a related vein what annoys me are so-called modern programs like
> > "git", "hg", and others which default to always piping their output
> > through $PAGER, along with such things as colour decorations enabled,
> > but when you tack on "|$PAGER" to their command-line then they turn off
> > the decorations!  They cause me to have to undo decades of finger
> > memory.
>
> Well, for further fun, one could always export GIT_PAGER=cat,
> then git will not use a pager for those commands, recognising that
> 'cat' is a no-op in such cases.  :-)
>
> DF
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-22 21:33                 ` Rob Pike
@ 2020-06-22 21:58                   ` Kurt H Maier
  2020-06-22 21:59                   ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Kurt H Maier @ 2020-06-22 21:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 07:33:31AM +1000, Rob Pike wrote:
> There is only one correct way.
> 
> 
> ... .bashrc
> 

I have a doubt.

khm

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-22 21:33                 ` Rob Pike
  2020-06-22 21:58                   ` Kurt H Maier
@ 2020-06-22 21:59                   ` Bakul Shah
  2020-06-22 22:43                     ` Steffen Nurpmeso
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2020-06-22 21:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1316 bytes --]

$ PAGER="col -b" git log
33mcommit fe147581ff1c5b0571a40369cd257fe60bfee58cm33m (m1;36mHEAD -> m1;32mmasterm33m, m1;31morigin/masterm33m)m
...

$ git log | cat
commit fe147581ff1c5b0571a40369cd257fe60bfee58c

There is probably a way to turn off syntax coloring but I haven't bothered to learn.

$ man git-log | wc
    2512   14056  127024

> On Jun 22, 2020, at 2:33 PM, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> There is only one correct way.
> 
> % grep PAGER .bashrc
> export PAGER='col -b'
> % 
> 
> -rob
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 2:26 AM Derek Fawcus <dfawcus+lists-tuhs@employees.org <mailto:dfawcus%2Blists-tuhs@employees.org>> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 05:35:28PM -0700, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > 
> > In a related vein what annoys me are so-called modern programs like
> > "git", "hg", and others which default to always piping their output
> > through $PAGER, along with such things as colour decorations enabled,
> > but when you tack on "|$PAGER" to their command-line then they turn off
> > the decorations!  They cause me to have to undo decades of finger
> > memory.
> 
> Well, for further fun, one could always export GIT_PAGER=cat,
> then git will not use a pager for those commands, recognising that
> 'cat' is a no-op in such cases.  :-)
> 
> DF


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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-22 21:59                   ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
@ 2020-06-22 22:43                     ` Steffen Nurpmeso
  2020-06-25  1:50                       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2020-06-22 22:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bakul Shah; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

Bakul Shah wrote in
<0F78CB9D-870B-4008-B975-23756EFC6F83@iitbombay.org>:
 |$ PAGER="col -b" git log
 |
 |33mcommit fe147581ff1c5b0571a40369cd257fe60bfee58cm33m (m1;36mHEAD \
 |-> m1;32mmasterm33m, m1;31morigin/masterm33m)m
 |
 |...
 |
 |$ git log | cat
 |
 |commit fe147581ff1c5b0571a40369cd257fe60bfee58c
 |
 |There is probably a way to turn off syntax coloring but I haven't bothered \
 |to learn.
 |
 |$ man git-log | wc
 |
 |2512 14056 127024

Hihihi.  I wanted to reply

Rob Pike wrote in
<CAKzdPgzR_pdZLKeGrYTNAXyyXR_=iXtJTEa3TFkOFra6e8b8+g@mail.gmail.com>:
 |There is only one correct way.
 |
 |% grep PAGER .bashrc
 |
 |export PAGER='col -b'

As long as groff(1) is used for manual display i assume you also
have "export GROFF_NO_SGR=1".
The source of

  #?0|kent:steffen$ pkginfo -o `command -v col`
  Package     File
  util-linux  usr/bin/col
  util-linux  usr/bin/colcrt
  util-linux  usr/bin/colrm
  util-linux  usr/bin/column
  #?0|kent:steffen$ prt-get info util-linux
  Name:         util-linux
  Path:         /usr/ports/core
  Version:      2.35.2
  Release:      1
  Description:  Miscellaneous system utilities
  URL:          https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/
  Maintainer:   CRUX System Team, core-ports at crux dot nu
  Dependencies: eudev,ncurses,zlib

states

  /*
   * This command is deprecated.  The utility is in maintenance mode,
   * meaning we keep them in source tree for backward compatibility
   * only.  Do not waste time making this command better, unless the
   * fix is about security or other very critical issue.
   *
   * See Documentation/deprecated.txt for more information.
   */

Plan9port has a version, though.  And i searched in golang/cmd,
but did not find a copy.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-22 22:43                     ` Steffen Nurpmeso
@ 2020-06-25  1:50                       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  2020-06-25 21:31                         ` Steffen Nurpmeso
  2020-07-05  1:34                         ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Theodore Y. Ts'o @ 2020-06-25  1:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bakul Shah, Rob Pike, The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 12:43:01AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
>   #?0|kent:steffen$ pkginfo -o `command -v col`
>   Package     File
>   util-linux  usr/bin/col
>
> states
> 
>   /*
>    * This command is deprecated.  The utility is in maintenance mode,
>    * meaning we keep them in source tree for backward compatibility
>    * only.  Do not waste time making this command better, unless the
>    * fix is about security or other very critical issue.
>    *
>    * See Documentation/deprecated.txt for more information.
>    */

I'll note that the Austin Group / The Open Group marked those commands
as LEGACY[1] in the Single Unix Specification V2 in 1997:

   The utilities in the table below are marked LEGACY. Various factors
   may have contributed to the decision to class a utility
   LEGACY. Application writers should not use functionality marked
   LEGACY.

   If a migration path exists, advice is given to application
   developers regarding alternative means of obtaining similar
   functionality. This information may be found in the APPLICATION
   USAGE sections on the relevant pages.

   No requirement beyond that which was in effect at the time that
   these utilities were marked LEGACY shall be applied to these
   utilities.

   calendar cancel cc col cpio cu dircmp dis egrep fgrep line lint lpstat
   mail pack pcat pg spell sum tar unpack uulog uuname uupick uuto

[1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/intro.html#tag_001_003_003

The quote from the Single Unix Specification: "No requirement beyond
that which was in effect at the time that these utilities were marked
LEGACY shall be applied to these utilities." is not that different
from "Do not waste time making this command better, unless the fix is
about security or other very critical issue."

And while I'm sure the Linux haters will be happy to try to blame
Linux for the decision to declare pg, col, et.al as "legacy", in 1997
The Open Group was hardly filled with Linux developers; '97 predates
IBM and Oracle declaring their support for Linux (1998), the
publication of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar (also 1998), the start of
the GNOME project (1999), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (first released
in 2002), and Ubuntu Linux (2004).

						- Ted
						
P.S.  Of course, the fact that the The Open Group tried to convince
the world to stop using tar and cpio in favor to pax seems to be a
strong indication that they forgot the lesson of King Canute.  :-)

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-25  1:50                       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
@ 2020-06-25 21:31                         ` Steffen Nurpmeso
  2020-07-05  1:34                         ` Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2020-06-25 21:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Theodore Y. Ts'o; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list, Bakul Shah

Hello.

Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote in
<20200625015009.GB4655@mit.edu>:
 |On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 12:43:01AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |>   #?0|kent:steffen$ pkginfo -o `command -v col`
 |>   Package     File
 |>   util-linux  usr/bin/col
 |>
 |> states
 |> 
 |>   /*
 |>    * This command is deprecated.  The utility is in maintenance mode,
 |>    * meaning we keep them in source tree for backward compatibility
 |>    * only.  Do not waste time making this command better, unless the
 |>    * fix is about security or other very critical issue.
 |>    *
 |>    * See Documentation/deprecated.txt for more information.
 |>    */
 |
 |I'll note that the Austin Group / The Open Group marked those commands
 |as LEGACY[1] in the Single Unix Specification V2 in 1997:
 |
 |   The utilities in the table below are marked LEGACY. Various factors
 |   may have contributed to the decision to class a utility
 |   LEGACY. Application writers should not use functionality marked
 |   LEGACY.
 |
 |   If a migration path exists, advice is given to application
 |   developers regarding alternative means of obtaining similar
 |   functionality. This information may be found in the APPLICATION
 |   USAGE sections on the relevant pages.
 |
 |   No requirement beyond that which was in effect at the time that
 |   these utilities were marked LEGACY shall be applied to these
 |   utilities.
 |
 |   calendar cancel cc col cpio cu dircmp dis egrep fgrep line lint lpstat
 |   mail pack pcat pg spell sum tar unpack uulog uuname uupick uuto
 |
 |[1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/intro.html#tag_001\
 |_003_003
 |
 |The quote from the Single Unix Specification: "No requirement beyond
 |that which was in effect at the time that these utilities were marked
 |LEGACY shall be applied to these utilities." is not that different
 |from "Do not waste time making this command better, unless the fix is
 |about security or other very critical issue."
 |
 |And while I'm sure the Linux haters will be happy to try to blame
 |Linux for the decision to declare pg, col, et.al as "legacy", in 1997
 |The Open Group was hardly filled with Linux developers; '97 predates
 |IBM and Oracle declaring their support for Linux (1998), the
 |publication of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar (also 1998), the start of
 |the GNOME project (1999), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (first released
 |in 2002), and Ubuntu Linux (2004).
 |
 |      - Ted
 |      
 |P.S.  Of course, the fact that the The Open Group tried to convince
 |the world to stop using tar and cpio in favor to pax seems to be a
 |strong indication that they forgot the lesson of King Canute.  :-)
 --End of <20200625015009.GB4655@mit.edu>

Ok.  Yes, POSIX is a condensed pool of tradition, history and
knowledge.  I do not play it well, let alone in its entirety.
STREAMS not at all.  After the time when the "Unix community" came
together, more or less, as i understand it, in POSIX, to finally
find a common ground (again), the current "POSIX group" more or
less started collecting "behind the pack" what can be standardized
as a common foundation, to fill gaps, and to clarify ambiguities.

I have the impression that POSIX is referred to quite often ---
sometimes i have to search the net to find more or less nothing
good, stackoverflow, superuser, you-know (or maybe even not, having
grown in this environment and even at such an outstanding
position, and for such a long time), then POSIX shines through and
stands out from this mess.  One of the main contributors stated to
me years ago something like "POSIX is an excellent foundation.."

The current Issue 7, 2018 edition of POSIX states on page 3481,
line 117589 ff.

  legacy
  The term ``legacy’’ was included in earlier versions of this
  standard but is no longer used in the current version.

For col(1) that means, unfortunately, to abandon all hope.  It
does not exist.  (It never did in any POSIX document i have in
full text, not a moment i had an intent to look there.)

Actually i was astonished.  You said IBM (i do not know Oracle)
declared support for Linux in 1998!  I would have sworn that there
was a big billion dollar announcement in 2003 or around that time,
with "evangelists" appearing on eg Linux Magazine (of Germany,
what i know..).  I always, foolishly, state this must have been
around 2005, the time when the wonderful Linux HOWTOs entered
their bit rot age.

Just yesterday, i use Linux for real since April 2019 (1999-2002
does not count, with all the out-of-the box SuSE, RedHat and
Halloween Linux, and Debian Woody) and take a week of learning
Linux better, ZFS on Monday, switch from proxy_arp=1 network for
my VMs and such to separate netns with
net<->host:veth-netns-veth:bridge<->vms++ on Tuesday (with almost
400 percent performance penalty, but: cool!), and since yesterday
i try for the first time to do my own kernel with initrd (only big
one for now, efi stub, builtin firmware, no modules except one
from staging which cannot be linked in etc.), in order to get an
allyesmod thing which i can use to plug into a box, lsmod>MODS,
and then do localyesconfig, you know.  I hope i find some time.

However, just yesterday i wondered what would happen if suddenly
virt-manager etc. would stop working, how many people would know
how to continue?  You really find nothing good on the web, and all
the billion dollar players and their forums etc, they are no help
at all.  Luckily for ZFS there is the FreeBSD handbook (people who
care), which is a kind starter (or would be if you would really go
that route, i not for the moment, at least), and that i can apply
a bridge onto a veth on a wifi network device that allows no
bridge to be attached crossed my mind, finally, yay.  For that
proxy_arp thing i could read iptables-tut and Linux Advanced
Routing & Traffic Control HOWTO, which says "Can be very useful
when building 'ip pseudo bridges'. Do take care that your netmasks
are very correct before enabling this! Also be aware that the
rp_filter, mentioned elsewhere, also operates on ARP queries!" How
could anyone hate people who write such HOWTOs?
But other than that, POSIX is also always worth looking at, right.
Quite off topic that all, though..

Ciao,

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-25  1:50                       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  2020-06-25 21:31                         ` Steffen Nurpmeso
@ 2020-07-05  1:34                         ` Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2020-07-05  1:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, 24 Jun 2020, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:

> P.S.  Of course, the fact that the The Open Group tried to convince the 
> world to stop using tar and cpio in favor to pax seems to be a strong 
> indication that they forgot the lesson of King Canute.  :-)

Minor nit: King Canute never tried to hold back the waves.  His subjects 
were convinced that he could, so he demonstrated otherwise.

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 21:36 ` Rob Pike
@ 2020-06-15 22:55   ` Henry Bent
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Henry Bent @ 2020-06-15 22:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1104 bytes --]

On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 17:37, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

> I had forgotten about that tool, along with many others. "Comp" sounds
> plausible but as I said, I forget. (Not a sign of age; my memory for
> details is no match for Clem's; to me stage actors are superheroes).
>

Remembering the blocking and the actor's names for a play you saw thirty
years ago would be an impressive feat, but I would argue that it is much
more beneficial in the long run to remember the basic plot and the message
that the production was attempting to convey.

> This history stuff is fun because of the reminder of a time when tools
were simple and you could create a whole new one in an afternoon.

Indeed, that's a nearly impossible task now.  We have transitioned to a
world where you can say, "here's my sketch for a program that I think would
be useful," and that sketch is either a basic chapter outline or you've
only finished writing chapter one.  You put it up on Github, try to give it
a little publicity, and hope that others can share your vision or at least
provide constructive criticism.

-Henry

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15 20:25 Norman Wilson
@ 2020-06-15 21:36 ` Rob Pike
  2020-06-15 22:55   ` Henry Bent
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-06-15 21:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Norman Wilson; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1390 bytes --]

I had forgotten about that tool, along with many others. "Comp" sounds
plausible but as I said, I forget. (Not a sign of age; my memory for
details is no match for Clem's; to me stage actors are superheroes).

I do remember the tool existing, though, and now see it as related to a
long list of similar things, including "go generate". I wonder if my
subconscious held on to it.

This history stuff is fun because of the reminder of a time when tools were
simple and you could create a whole new one in an afternoon.

-rob


On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 6:26 AM Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> wrote:

> Rob Pike:
>
>   Yeah, p is all we need. I think it originated with td at UofT. I might
> have
>   brought it with me to Bell Labs, or recreated it. Probably the former.
>
> ====
>
> The former, I think.  The source code in V10 is very similar
> to that you left behind at Caltech (where I first encountered
> p).  Most differences have to do with using opendir and readdir
> rather than reading raw directories in the SPname code.
>
> A further clue is that, even in V10, p.c begins
>
> /*%cc p.c pad.o spname.o
>  */
>
> The tool that looked for such lines to tell it how to compile
> things (I forget its name; was it comp?) doesn't seem to have
> survived in the archival backup I have from Caltech HEP, but
> I'm quite sure it came from U of T as well.
>
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
@ 2020-06-15 20:25 Norman Wilson
  2020-06-15 21:36 ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Norman Wilson @ 2020-06-15 20:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Rob Pike:

  Yeah, p is all we need. I think it originated with td at UofT. I might have
  brought it with me to Bell Labs, or recreated it. Probably the former.

====

The former, I think.  The source code in V10 is very similar
to that you left behind at Caltech (where I first encountered
p).  Most differences have to do with using opendir and readdir
rather than reading raw directories in the SPname code.

A further clue is that, even in V10, p.c begins

/*%cc p.c pad.o spname.o
 */

The tool that looked for such lines to tell it how to compile
things (I forget its name; was it comp?) doesn't seem to have
survived in the archival backup I have from Caltech HEP, but
I'm quite sure it came from U of T as well.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  7:40     ` Ed Carp
@ 2020-06-15  8:17       ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-06-15  8:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Ed Carp; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list, Bakul Shah

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 25 bytes --]

The Blit was nice.

-rob

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  2:55   ` Larry McVoy
  2020-06-15  4:26     ` Rob Pike
  2020-06-15  4:27     ` Bakul Shah
@ 2020-06-15  7:40     ` Ed Carp
  2020-06-15  8:17       ` Rob Pike
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Ed Carp @ 2020-06-15  7:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list, Bakul Shah

Agreed. I use "less -c" daily. :)<div
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font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
line-height: 18px;">Virus-free. <a
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On 6/14/20, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> I believe that was my statement, not Dougs, and I stand behind it.
> Less was a huge improvement.  If you want me to dig out why I will
> but I don't want to because it will make you look bad, that is not
> my goal.
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 07:41:27PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
>> On Jun 14, 2020, at 7:26 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> >> less(1) was actually an improvement
>> >
>> > Hmm. Less is my favorite whipping boy for featuritis.
>> >
>> > % less --help |wc
>> >    242    1331   12202
>>
>> % wc p.c
>>      90     219    1504 p.c
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
>

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  2:41 ` Bakul Shah
  2020-06-15  2:55   ` Larry McVoy
@ 2020-06-15  7:12   ` Thomas Paulsen
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Thomas Paulsen @ 2020-06-15  7:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bakul Shah; +Cc: tuhs

> Hmm. Less is my favorite whipping boy for featuritis.
> 
> % less --help |wc
>    242    1331   12202
Fedora release 32:
less --help |wc
    252    1364   12625




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  4:27     ` Bakul Shah
@ 2020-06-15  4:38       ` George Michaelson
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: George Michaelson @ 2020-06-15  4:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bakul Shah; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

I get two hits in this, aside from the bikeshed of 'what is the status
line telling me about things I am looking at' which is a disease Emacs
has.

1) I use more, and the screen DOESNT clear when I finish. DOH!

2) I use less, and the screen DOES clear when I finish. DOH!

I kind of tend to 1. The 'clear' command works at a tty to flush
screen so for me, noting backwards scroll, less is 'more; clear'

But backwards scroll has been useful to me. Oh I know, I have
scrollbars on the terminal. But still. I don't like having to engage
the mouse for this stuff. I want commands, modal or otherwise to do
things which go to 'where am I, in the buffer'

Both are wildly complex. Who knew tail on a log was something
integrated into a pager? (I think it is for less. I don't think more
has that)

-G

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  2:55   ` Larry McVoy
  2020-06-15  4:26     ` Rob Pike
@ 2020-06-15  4:27     ` Bakul Shah
  2020-06-15  4:38       ` George Michaelson
  2020-06-15  7:40     ` Ed Carp
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2020-06-15  4:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

No one is beating you up for your opinion. One should be able to 
express alternate points of view without being made to look bad.
But let us face it, less is not only more, it is far too much :-) Less
gone wild.

@ Fortune Yost had added page mode as a line discipline. That
would've avoided the temptation to turn less into a mini editor.

> On Jun 14, 2020, at 7:55 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> I believe that was my statement, not Dougs, and I stand behind it.
> Less was a huge improvement.  If you want me to dig out why I will
> but I don't want to because it will make you look bad, that is not
> my goal.
> 
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 07:41:27PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
>> On Jun 14, 2020, at 7:26 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> less(1) was actually an improvement
>>> 
>>> Hmm. Less is my favorite whipping boy for featuritis.
>>> 
>>> % less --help |wc
>>>   242    1331   12202
>> 
>> % wc p.c
>>     90     219    1504 p.c
> 
> -- 
> ---
> Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  2:55   ` Larry McVoy
@ 2020-06-15  4:26     ` Rob Pike
  2020-06-15  4:27     ` Bakul Shah
  2020-06-15  7:40     ` Ed Carp
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2020-06-15  4:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list, Bakul Shah

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1035 bytes --]

Yeah, p is all we need. I think it originated with td at UofT. I might have
brought it with me to Bell Labs, or recreated it. Probably the former. The
Plan 9 version is, except for a change of I/O library, likely the same
code. 90 lines of C.

More and less are both more and less than p.

-rob


On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 12:56 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> I believe that was my statement, not Dougs, and I stand behind it.
> Less was a huge improvement.  If you want me to dig out why I will
> but I don't want to because it will make you look bad, that is not
> my goal.
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 07:41:27PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
> > On Jun 14, 2020, at 7:26 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > >> less(1) was actually an improvement
> > >
> > > Hmm. Less is my favorite whipping boy for featuritis.
> > >
> > > % less --help |wc
> > >    242    1331   12202
> >
> > % wc p.c
> >      90     219    1504 p.c
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy                  lm at mcvoy.com
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1744 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  2:41 ` Bakul Shah
@ 2020-06-15  2:55   ` Larry McVoy
  2020-06-15  4:26     ` Rob Pike
                       ` (2 more replies)
  2020-06-15  7:12   ` Thomas Paulsen
  1 sibling, 3 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2020-06-15  2:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bakul Shah; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

I believe that was my statement, not Dougs, and I stand behind it.
Less was a huge improvement.  If you want me to dig out why I will
but I don't want to because it will make you look bad, that is not
my goal.

On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 07:41:27PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Jun 14, 2020, at 7:26 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> > 
> >> less(1) was actually an improvement
> > 
> > Hmm. Less is my favorite whipping boy for featuritis.
> > 
> > % less --help |wc
> >    242    1331   12202
> 
> % wc p.c
>      90     219    1504 p.c

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

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
  2020-06-15  2:26 [TUHS] " Doug McIlroy
@ 2020-06-15  2:41 ` Bakul Shah
  2020-06-15  2:55   ` Larry McVoy
  2020-06-15  7:12   ` Thomas Paulsen
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 46+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2020-06-15  2:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list

On Jun 14, 2020, at 7:26 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
>> less(1) was actually an improvement
> 
> Hmm. Less is my favorite whipping boy for featuritis.
> 
> % less --help |wc
>    242    1331   12202

% wc p.c
     90     219    1504 p.c


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Origins and life of the pg pager
@ 2020-06-15  2:26 Doug McIlroy
  2020-06-15  2:41 ` Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 46+ messages in thread
From: Doug McIlroy @ 2020-06-15  2:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

>  less(1) was actually an improvement

Hmm. Less is my favorite whipping boy for featuritis.

% less --help |wc
    242    1331   12202

I am very happy with p.

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 46+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2020-07-05  1:35 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 46+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2020-06-14 22:52 [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager Warren Toomey
2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton
2020-06-14 23:52   ` [TUHS] " David Barto
2020-06-15  0:06     ` George Michaelson
2020-06-15  0:31     ` Alan D. Salewski
2020-06-15  0:35       ` Alan D. Salewski
2020-06-15  1:38         ` Warner Losh
2020-06-15  1:47           ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-15  2:38             ` Alec Muffett
2020-06-15  2:46               ` Alec Muffett
2020-06-15  2:26           ` Charles H. Sauer
2020-06-15 14:03           ` Mary Ann Horton
2020-06-15 20:19             ` Greg A. Woods
2020-06-15 20:50               ` Mary Ann Horton
2020-06-15  0:32   ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Nemo Nusquam
2020-06-15  5:41   ` Lars Brinkhoff
2020-06-15 13:56     ` Clem Cole
2020-06-15 14:15       ` Mary Ann Horton
2020-06-15 14:56         ` Clem Cole
2020-06-15 15:04           ` Richard Salz
2020-06-15 16:14             ` Clem Cole
2020-06-15 15:45           ` Lars Brinkhoff
2020-06-15 19:08             ` Lars Brinkhoff
2020-06-21 18:49           ` Michael Siegel
2020-06-22  0:35             ` Greg A. Woods
2020-06-22 16:24               ` Derek Fawcus
2020-06-22 21:33                 ` Rob Pike
2020-06-22 21:58                   ` Kurt H Maier
2020-06-22 21:59                   ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
2020-06-22 22:43                     ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2020-06-25  1:50                       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-06-25 21:31                         ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2020-07-05  1:34                         ` Dave Horsfall
2020-06-18 12:49 ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Michael Siegel
2020-06-15  2:26 [TUHS] " Doug McIlroy
2020-06-15  2:41 ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-15  2:55   ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-15  4:26     ` Rob Pike
2020-06-15  4:27     ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-15  4:38       ` George Michaelson
2020-06-15  7:40     ` Ed Carp
2020-06-15  8:17       ` Rob Pike
2020-06-15  7:12   ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-06-15 20:25 Norman Wilson
2020-06-15 21:36 ` Rob Pike
2020-06-15 22:55   ` Henry Bent

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