[TUHS] UNIX Manual Cover Art Origins?

[TUHS] UNIX Manual Cover Art Origins?

[Douglas McIlroy]

> Does anyone know of any of the tools, formats, practices, etc. used in producing the actual graphical covers of various published UNIX manuals?

The Bell Labs publication department at Whippany did the physical
design for the bound versions of the Research Unix manual--from v7 as
a trade brook through v10, also a trade book.. They did the cover
designs for v8-v10 in house. I am not sure whether they did the v7
cover, farmed it out, or left it up to Holt Rinehart. Whippany handled
the printing of v8 and v9. Saunders College Publishing did it for v10.

Unfortunately, I do not remember whom I dealt with in Whippany, and my
records of the interactions are long gone.

Doug

[TUHS] Re: UNIX Manual Cover Art Origins?

[segaloco via TUHS]

Thanks for the info Doug!  That certainly gave me somewhere to start.  After stepping through the circa 1983 BTL SVR2 manual, the only Whippany-specific pages I found related to a "DI-3000" printing system from Precision Visuals.  The cover of the referenced manual is on Google Books, but I can't seem to find a scanned copy.  Whether it would've been related, couldn't say.  Much of what I can find on DI-3000 is advertising materials and articles about specific applications, but no general user material.

I'm glad to have the V7 and V10 editions on hand, but I didn't know V8 and V9 also saw print release, although just now searching I did find what appeared to be a comb-bound print of V8, but couldn't find a second source for the image (https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C5112AQHO14UEpqFPPQ/article-cover_image-shrink_600_2000/0/1520220760198?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=Rt8IyYB6GgD5RIBjBAjwP8hgcxcuKML0BwIxgzhLW0M).

Anywho, I'll add DI-3000 to my list of things to comb for history of every now and then, maybe something cool will pop up.

- Matt G.

------- Original Message -------
On Wednesday, April 19th, 2023 at 1:10 PM, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:


> > Does anyone know of any of the tools, formats, practices, etc. used in producing the actual graphical covers of various published UNIX manuals?
> 
> 
> The Bell Labs publication department at Whippany did the physical
> design for the bound versions of the Research Unix manual--from v7 as
> a trade brook through v10, also a trade book.. They did the cover
> designs for v8-v10 in house. I am not sure whether they did the v7
> cover, farmed it out, or left it up to Holt Rinehart. Whippany handled
> the printing of v8 and v9. Saunders College Publishing did it for v10.
> 
> Unfortunately, I do not remember whom I dealt with in Whippany, and my
> records of the interactions are long gone.
> 
> Doug

[TUHS] Re: UNIX Manual Cover Art Origins?

[arnold]

segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> I'm glad to have the V7 and V10 editions on hand, but I
> didn't know V8 and V9 also saw print release, although just
> now searching I did find what appeared to be a comb-bound
> print of V8,

V8 and V9 were printed for internal use. In the mid-90s I
managed to get a copy of the V8 manual via Brian Kernighan,
and then I paid $50 (IIRC) for the V9 manual - I corresponded
with Doug about it who had to check if they could actually sell
me one. :-)

Arnold

[TUHS] UNIX Manual Cover Art Origins?

[segaloco via TUHS]

Good day everyone, I'm in search of a bit of esoteric information regarding published UNIX works.  Does anyone know of any of the tools, formats, practices, etc. used in producing the actual graphical covers of various published UNIX manuals?

Some that come to mind:

The alphabet blocks cover of the HRW V7 Manuals

The simple 70's Bell-style cover of the UNIX System III manual

The nice 3B-20 picture on the UNIX 4.1 manual

The grid patterns design on the UNIX System V documentation

The blue "big V" SVR4 manuals (given the time disparity, these could have totally different underpinnings)

Where I'm particularly curious is how these covers were actually set, defined, the image data to print on them stored, formatted, etc.  In other words, <???>:troff::covers:manpages where ??? may also represent more than just the specific tools/formats.  Anyone have the scoop on the actual raw materials and technologies used for preparing the covers and/or if any of those original assets, in their raw form, would potentially still exist somewhere?  To be honest, I am particularly interested in the original, highest fidelity possible image of the 3B-20 from the corresponding manual (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Unix_Manuals#/media/File:UNIX4.1UsersManualCover.png) but am happy with any info illuminates what went into the actual physical production.  Thanks all!

- Matt G.

P.S. If it provides any leads, the closest thing I've found in actual document sources to material related to these aspects of physical publication are the files M.folio and M.tabs here: https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=SysIII/usr/src/man/tools