[TUHS] Who used *ROFF?

[crossd@gmail.com (Dan Cross)]

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 10:55 AM, Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> On May 15, 2018, at 10:37 AM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 10:07 AM, Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 14/05/2018, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote (in part):
> > > > I had a boss once who demanded that we learn -mm; for some reason I
still
> > > > preferred -ms, as it somehow seemed more "natural", and I still use
it to
> > > > this day (well, when I'm not using the Mac, that is).
> > >
> > > Why not? The Mac has it: /usr/share/groff/1.19.2/tmac/s.tmac
> >
> > I have some vague distant memory of a commercial Unix variant that came
with troff and the -mm macros, but without -ms. I can't remember which it
was (or if I'm just imagining things). Anyone have any ideas?
>
> The PWB children used -mm  I seem to remember that the base system 3 and
maybe the original sysv did not include it since troff was not apart. If
you pulled from BSD or ditroff; you got it.

Maybe that's what it was. Let's see, System V's I have known and loathed[*]:

AIX on RT and RS/6k, Irix, HP-UX, UNISYS, Solaris 2.x for x in 2-5; perhaps
others that I can't recall now.

Perhaps it was one of them? For some reason, AIX is sticking out in my head
as not having the full compliment of troff macros as supplied by BSD
distributions. Something *definitely* didn't come with -me, though I can't
recall what now.

        - Dan C.

[*] "Loathed" is entirely too strong of a word, but in the enthusiasm of
first exposure combined with the headiness (read: ignorance) of youth, it
was easy to fall prey to the tribalism of the pro-BSD people on my campus;
the response was less rational and more emotional. That said, we've covered
in great depth on this list how Solaris 2.x, in particular, was rushed to
market too early; attempts at conversion from SunOS 4.x were fraught and
that left a bad taste for some time. Like wanting to wear the same jacket
as a rock star, wanting to run the same software as one's idols was an
attempt to gather some amount of cachet that was unwarranted. But just as
the music I listened to when I was 8 years old was dramatically different
than the music that I liked at 13, which is still somewhat removed from
that which I listen to most often now (though curiously there is much more
continuity there), I find that I wouldn't really want to go back to SunOS 4
on a SPARCstation 1, let alone 4.3BSD on a VAX, even with a relatively nice
HP or DEC terminal.
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