Re: [TUHS] Documenter's Workbench versions

[Dan Plassche <boomer3200@gmail.com>]

Following-up with a correction and some details about user-facing 
changes in Documenter's Workbench.

> 
> 1984 SVR2 containing DWB 2.0 incorporating ditroff (no postscript
>     output yet though)

My mistake.  I was glancing at a late copy of the 3B2 SVR2 source with 
DWB 2.0 and should have written 1.0 here.

DWB 1.0 was released in 1984 at the same time as SVR2.  Changes from v7 
troff are the inclusion of ditroff as troff, C/A/T troff as otroff, the 
mm macros, pic, and sroff.  The sroff command provided a faster 
simplified interpreter for line printer output.

> 1987 SVR3 unbundled all troff versions and offered DWB 2+ as
>     an add-on package

DWB 2.0 was released in 1986.  This verison added grap and the mptx 
indexing macros while removing otroff and sroff.  Elan eroff for DOS and 
sqtroff were based on DWB 2.

DWB 2+ was generally available after 1987 as an optional binary add-on 
package at added cost.

SVR4 troff included the postscript output formatter added to the 
codebase in mid-1988 (tracked in Research UNIX v9), but not grap.
 
> 198907 DWB 3.0 changed font tables to ascii from old binary format
> 
> 199004 DWB 3.1 retired nroff for monolithic troff binary with -a flag
>     for simplified ascii output (for example, tables are not formatted
>     for true hardcopy output in ascii format)

199202 DWB 3.2 was released with mpm macros for automatic vertical page 
justification, 8-bit clean i/o, and picasso visual line drawing 
interface using the OPEN LOOK toolkit

199207 DWB 3.3 contained a new version of tbl and the mpm macro package 
to customize postscript color and page formats

199311 DWB 3.4 with new spell check, dwb command to guess processor 
pipeline, postscript file layout tools, and X11 viewers (xhbt for 
eqn/pic/tbl figures and dwbman for hypertext navigation of manpages)

I hope this is a helpful summary.  I've been working on a more detailed 
timeline tracking the versions shipped by different UNIX vendors.  
Also testing C/A/T troff to postscript converters (Adobe transcript, 
Chris Lewis' psroff, and jetroff) to approximate older output in 
comparison to the excellent heirloom doctools.


Thanks,

Dan Plassche