From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: lm@mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2017 18:48:16 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] RIP J.F.Ossanna In-Reply-To: <20171129190055.9ZFVf%steffen@sdaoden.eu> References: <003d01d367dc$cd3e8910$67bb9b30$@ronnatalie.com> <20171128001543.GG3430@mcvoy.com> <20171129190055.9ZFVf%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Message-ID: <20171130024816.GI16794@mcvoy.com> On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 08:00:55PM +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: > Larry McVoy wrote: > |On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 07:06:51PM -0500, Ron Natalie wrote: > |> 1977 marks my entry into the world of UNIX. I've always stated there was > |> only one person who truly understood nroff and he was dead. > |> I mourn the fact that of all the UNIX greats I've met, I missed out on > |> Ossanna. > > |I think one could argue that James Clark has a pretty good handle on > |roff (having written the GNU version of nroff/troff/tbl/eqn/pic etc). > > And Werner Lemberg, who carried the torch for the last almost two > decades. He brought in some really great improvements, like > arguments for strings, which allows to write pretty much TeX like > a.k.a. inline if you want to (as in "this is \*[I talic] text"). Yep. James exited stage left and Werner stepped in. I mean no disrespect to anyone, I was just saying that James has a really good handle on roff, he redid it all. I admire him for doing so (even though I curse the fact that he did it in C++).