From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 25024 invoked from network); 11 Feb 2021 02:53:15 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 11 Feb 2021 02:53:15 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 0308D9B969; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 12:53:14 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA6A494F1B; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 12:52:55 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 7B40594F1B; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 12:52:54 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D790994F19 for ; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 12:52:53 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 5D84E35E26B; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 18:52:53 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2021 18:52:53 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Mary Ann Horton Message-ID: <20210211025253.GX13701@mcvoy.com> References: <8b580c46-ecfb-9383-ed43-08108b3ee7bf@tllds.com> <20201130163753.GB18187@mcvoy.com> <202102102236.11AMann01820861@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <4be538bd-a4ee-4287-4d61-9cc6e18c061b@mhorton.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4be538bd-a4ee-4287-4d61-9cc6e18c061b@mhorton.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] troff was not so widely usable X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" The Hershey fonts were what we had, they kinda sucked but you worked with them. I think is a passage, you know those fonts, you were there, it was not great. People who haven't been there have no idea how lucky they are. On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 06:30:31PM -0800, Mary Ann Horton wrote: > We had vtroff at Berkeley around 1980, on the big Versatec wet plotter, 4 > pages wide. We got really good at cutting up the pages on the output. > > It used the Hershey font. It was horrible. Mangled somehow, lots of parts of > glyphs missing. I called it the "Horse Shit" font. > > I took it as my mission to clean it up. I wrote "fed" to edit it, dot by > dot, on the graphical HP 2648 terminal at Berkeley. I got all the fonts > reasonably cleaned up, but it was laborious. > > I still hated Hershey. It was my dream to get real C/A/T output at the > largest 36 point size, and scan it in to create a decent set of Times fonts. > I finally got the C/A/T output years later at Bell Labs, but there were no > scanners available to me at the time. Then True Type came along and it was > moot. > > I did stumble onto one nice rendition of Times Roman in one point size, from > Stanford, I think. I used it to write banner(6). > > On 2/10/21 5:53 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > >Ron. That???s awesome.?? Ferrin used the Same set of Hersey Font that the > >XGP used.?? He got them from Stanford as I recall but they were publically > >(aka open source) > > > >On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 7:28 PM Ron Natalie >> wrote: > > > > We used nroff quite a bit with both the Model37 teletype (for > > which it > > wsa designed, ours even had the greek box on it) and with output > > filters > > for the lineprinter and the Diablos. > > > > Later on we drove troff into cat emulators that used Versatec > > printers. > > ?? ?? I don???t knwo wher Berkely???s vcat got their fonts, but the JHU > > verset > > had an amusing history on that. > > > > George Toth went down to the NRL which had a real CAT and printed out > > the fonts in large point size on film.?? ?? In the basement of the > > biophysics bulding was a scanning transmission electron microscope > > which > > used a PDP-11/20 as its controller and an older (512x512 or so) > > framebuffer.?? ?? George took the scanning wires off the microsope nad > > hooked them up to the X and Y of a tektronics oscilliscope. ?? Then he > > put a photomutlipler tube in a scope camera housing and hoked the > > sense > > wire from the microscope to that. > > > > He now had the worlds most expensive flying spot scanner. ??He???d tape > > one letter at a time to the scope and then bring up the microscope > > sofware (DOS/BATCH I think) and tell it to run the microscope.?? ?? > > Then > > without powering down the memory in the framebuffer, he???d boot up > > miniunix and copy the stuff from the framebuffer to an RX05 pack. > > After months of laboriously scanning he was able to write the CAT > > emulator. > > > > I had gone to work for Martin Marietta wirking on a classified > > project > > so I wrote hacks to the -mm macro package to handle security markings > > (automatically putting the highest on each page on thte top and > > bottom). > > ?? ?? Later when ditroff became available I continued to use it with > > various laserprinters.?? ?? I even wrote macropackages to emulate IBM???s > > doc style when we were contracting with them. > > > > This was all to the chagrin of my boss who wanted us to switch to > > Framemaker. > > > > > > > >-- > >Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm