[TUHS] "Edition 0" manual

[TUHS] "Edition 0" manual

[Doug McIlroy]

> I've not seen anything before Dennis' scan of the 1st
> Edition manuals. Can you make a scan of this one available?

I shall, as I had intended to do if this document was as
unknown or forgotten by others as it was by me.

Doug

[TUHS] "Edition 0" manual

[Doug McIlroy]

> It's worth noting that Unix was built for troff.  Typesetting patents
if I recall correctly.

This is a stretch. Unix was really built because Ken and Dennis
had a good idea. The purchase of a PDP-11 for it was in part
justified by the goal of making a word-processing system. The
first in-house "sale" of Unix was indeed to the patent department
for typing patents--the selling point was that roff could be
made (by an overnight modification) to print line numbers as
USPTO required, whereas that was not a feature of a commercial
competitor. The timeline is really roff--Unix--patent--nroff--troff.
Though roff antedated Unix, it did not motivate Unix.

> Is this The UNIX Time-Sharing System, or related to it? The same
> claim appears in the first paragraph:
> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/cacm.html

This draft clearly dates from 1971. Pieces of it were worked
into subsequent versions of the manual as well as published
descriptions of Unix, including the SIGOPS/CACM paper.

Doug

[TUHS] "Edition 0" manual

[Larry McVoy]

I was a little tongue in cheek, but it worked, I was trying to tease
out more details about the beginning.

And I personally love troff, had to write a paper in Latex recently
and found it painful.

On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 12:08:17AM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> 
> > It's worth noting that Unix was built for troff.  Typesetting patents
> if I recall correctly.
> 
> This is a stretch. Unix was really built because Ken and Dennis
> had a good idea. The purchase of a PDP-11 for it was in part
> justified by the goal of making a word-processing system. The
> first in-house "sale" of Unix was indeed to the patent department
> for typing patents--the selling point was that roff could be
> made (by an overnight modification) to print line numbers as
> USPTO required, whereas that was not a feature of a commercial
> competitor. The timeline is really roff--Unix--patent--nroff--troff.
> Though roff antedated Unix, it did not motivate Unix.
> 
> > Is this The UNIX Time-Sharing System, or related to it? The same
> > claim appears in the first paragraph:
> > https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/cacm.html
> 
> This draft clearly dates from 1971. Pieces of it were worked
> into subsequent versions of the manual as well as published
> descriptions of Unix, including the SIGOPS/CACM paper.
> 
> Doug
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs

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

[TUHS] "Edition 0" manual

[Doug McIlroy]

Among the papers of the late Bob Morris I have found a
Unix manual that I don't remember at all--a draft by
Dennis Ritchie, in the style of (but not designated as)
a technical report with numbered sections and subsections.
It does not resemble the familiar layout of the numbered
editions. Besides the usual overview of kernel and shell,
it describes system calls and some commands, in a layout
unrelated to the familiar man-page style. Detailed
reference/tutorial manuals for as, roff, db and ed
are included as appendices.

The famous and well-justified claim that "UNIX contains a numer
of features very seldom offered even by larger systems"
appears on page 1.

A little poking around tuhs.org didn't reveal a copy of
this document. Does anybody know of one somewhere else?

Doug

[TUHS] "Edition 0" manual

[Warren Toomey]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 08:55:36PM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> Among the papers of the late Bob Morris I have found a
> Unix manual that I don't remember at all--a draft by
> Dennis Ritchie, in the style of (but not designated as)
> a technical report with numbered sections and subsections.
> It does not resemble the familiar layout of the numbered
> editions. Besides the usual overview of kernel and shell,
> it describes system calls and some commands, in a layout
> unrelated to the familiar man-page style. Detailed
> reference/tutorial manuals for as, roff, db and ed
> are included as appendices.
> 
> The famous and well-justified claim that "UNIX contains a numer
> of features very seldom offered even by larger systems"
> appears on page 1.
> 
> A little poking around tuhs.org didn't reveal a copy of
> this document. Does anybody know of one somewhere else?

No, I've not seen anything before Dennis' scan of the 1st
Edition manuals. Can you make a scan of this one available?

Many thanks, Warren

[TUHS] "Edition 0" manual

[arnold]

> > A little poking around tuhs.org didn't reveal a copy of
> > this document. Does anybody know of one somewhere else?
>
> No, I've not seen anything before Dennis' scan of the 1st
> Edition manuals. Can you make a scan of this one available?

Seconded. Please? Pretty please?

Thanks!

Arnold

[TUHS] "Edition 0" manual

[Random832]

On 2015-11-24, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> The famous and well-justified claim that "UNIX contains a numer
> of features very seldom offered even by larger systems"
> appears on page 1.
>
> A little poking around tuhs.org didn't reveal a copy of
> this document. Does anybody know of one somewhere else?

Is this The UNIX Time-Sharing System, or related to it? The same
claim appears in the first paragraph:

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/cacm.html