[TUHS] V7 UNIX on VAX 11/750

[TUHS] V7 UNIX on VAX 11/750

[Norman Wilson]

Look again.  The colophon in my copy of The UNIX Programming Environment
(first paperback printing of the first edition) says
	This book was typeset in Times Roman and Courier by the
	authors, using a Mergenthaler Linotron 202 typesetter driven
	by a VAX-11/750 running the 8th Edition of the UNIX operating
	system.

I don't have a copy of the latter-day (now contains ISO) C book, but
if I recall correctly when it was written, it was probably typed in
on a VAX 8550 running the 9th edition system.  Probably it was the
latter-day 9th, which had crept along quite a bit beyond the hasty
9/e manual.  After I made some radical changes to the way device
drivers plugged into the kernel, I changed it to print `9Vr2' when
it booted, partly to distinguish the old system from the newer one
and partly to annoy enough people to reach critical energy to produce
a 10/e manual.  The tactic took a while but was ultimately successful.

For those who don't know the historic chain, the systems loosely
called V8, V9, and V10 were never real releases in any sense; they
were just names hung on the continuously-evolving system we ran in
the 1980s in the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Labs.
Brian and Dennis and Rob (and, for six years, I) used that system
for everyday work as well as as a sandbox for systems work; hence
the credit in the books.  There were tapes called V8 and V9 issued
to a few specific places under special on-off letter agreement, but
they correspond only approximately to the like-numbered manuals.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(which feels a lot like New Jersey this evening)

[TUHS] V7 UNIX on VAX 11/750

[Gregg C Levine]

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Hello again from Gregg C Levine
Don't go getting your panties in a twist, Norman, (to quote an old
friend.), I did look before completing the posting. And yes it did say
that. I have here a personal edition of the C book, (I bought it,
because I wanted to have the thing here when I did work in the
language, and needed to double check a reference.). 

I have out a copy of the book that John is kvetching about from my
local library. I checked that one, and it strangely enough agrees with
what you're saying, and with John too. I find it, ah, logical, that
the guys would use a Mergenthaler Linotron 202 typesetter for their
print runs. Actually the word is imagesetter. But that term will do. 
As I recall you worked there for a while, and do know what you're
talking about, so I'm not going to indulge myself in a flame war.
Besides I've actually done enough typesetting so as to be able to
argue the point with the bit brains at Adobe, so I'll even agree with
you now.
-------------------
Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon at worldnet.att.net
------------------------------------------------------------
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org
[mailto:tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org] On
> Behalf Of Norman Wilson
> Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 8:03 PM
> To: tuhs at tuhs.org
> Subject: [TUHS] V7 UNIX on VAX 11/750
> 
> Look again.  The colophon in my copy of The UNIX Programming
Environment
> (first paperback printing of the first edition) says
> 	This book was typeset in Times Roman and Courier by the
> 	authors, using a Mergenthaler Linotron 202 typesetter driven
> 	by a VAX-11/750 running the 8th Edition of the UNIX operating
> 	system.
> 
> I don't have a copy of the latter-day (now contains ISO) C book, but
> if I recall correctly when it was written, it was probably typed in
> on a VAX 8550 running the 9th edition system.  Probably it was the
> latter-day 9th, which had crept along quite a bit beyond the hasty
> 9/e manual.  After I made some radical changes to the way device
> drivers plugged into the kernel, I changed it to print `9Vr2' when
> it booted, partly to distinguish the old system from the newer one
> and partly to annoy enough people to reach critical energy to
produce
> a 10/e manual.  The tactic took a while but was ultimately
successful.
> 
> For those who don't know the historic chain, the systems loosely
> called V8, V9, and V10 were never real releases in any sense; they
> were just names hung on the continuously-evolving system we ran in
> the 1980s in the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Labs.
> Brian and Dennis and Rob (and, for six years, I) used that system
> for everyday work as well as as a sandbox for systems work; hence
> the credit in the books.  There were tapes called V8 and V9 issued
> to a few specific places under special on-off letter agreement, but
> they correspond only approximately to the like-numbered manuals.
> 
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON
> (which feels a lot like New Jersey this evening)
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs

[TUHS] Re: V7 UNIX on VAX 11/750

[Aaron J. Grier]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 08:03:18PM -0400, Norman Wilson wrote:

> I don't have a copy of the latter-day (now contains ISO) C book, but
> if I recall correctly when it was written, it was probably typed in on
> a VAX 8550 running the 9th edition system.

<digs out old copy>

	"[...] using a Graphic Systems phototypesetter driven by
	a PDP-11/70 running under the UNIX operating system."

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier at poofygoof.com
  "Isn't an OS that openly and proudly admits to come directly from Holy
   UNIX better than a cheap UNIX copycat that needs to be sued in court
   to determine what the hell it really is?"  --  Michael Sokolov

[TUHS] Re: V7 UNIX on VAX 11/750

[Dennis Ritchie]

To clean up some of the questions:

We (in our group) owned successively two photographic
typesetters:

The original Graphics Systems
C/A/T, which  was used to render the camera-
ready copy for several editions of the manual,
also the first edition of K&R as well as
other books.  This exposed characters
by flashing a Xenon lamp through a spinning
cylinder with the character images arranged
around the axis; the character was imaged
onto a fiber-optic bundle, which moved
horizontally with respect to the paper. The paper
was moved vertically.

The Linotron 202;  it had a CRT on which lines
of characters were drawn, with an unmoving,
line-wide fiber bundle. Rollers moved the paper
vertically.

Both of these were managed by us (including
the hardware connection, via DR11-C; it stood
in for the paper tape that the manufacturers
had intended).

These used chemical processing to develop
the paper. This was messy and (especially
for the C/A/T version) smelly, so we were
glad when the local Comp Center began offering
service on an Autologic APS-5, a machine similar
in design to the 202, but better engineered,
and the comp center managed the chemistry.
This was used for the second edition of K&R,
for example. I think what we sent was troff output
which the CC converted to Postscript.

Later this service was outsourced, then dropped.
In recent years laser printers have become
good enough that decent camera-ready copy
can be generated using them (e.g. for
Kernighan and Pike, The Practice of Programming).

As for the system aspects: K&R 1 (1978) was done on
what would soon be 7th edition Unix, on 11/70;
K&R 2 (1988) using 9th edition on VAX 8550.
Kernighan and Pike's Unix Programming
Evironment (1984) used 8th edition
on VAX 11/750.

About the releases (or pseudo releases) that
Norman mentions: actually 8th edition was
somewhat real, in that a consistent tape
and captured, probably corresponds fairly
well with its manual, and was educationally
licensed for real, though not in large quantity.
9th and 10th were indeed more conceptual in that
we sent stuff to people (e.g. Norman) who asked,
but they weren't collected in complete and
coherent form.

	Dennis