[TUHS] Re: Original print of V7 manual?

[Michael Parson <mparson@bl.org>]

On 2024-01-06 20:17, Mychaela Falconia wrote:

<snip>

>> the 1978 version of the K&R (which I thought was set on the APS-5 for 
>> the
>> first version - although it may have been on the Meganthaler).    
>> While I
>> still have a first edition, at one time, I had a copy of the proofs, 
>> which
>> I got from tjk in late 1977 IIRC - it might have been the Fall of '78
> 
> Now this part is intriguing.  Wikipedia says the 1st ed of K&R C book
> was published February 22, 1978.  Are you *absolutely certain* it was
> troffed on APS-5 or Linotron 202 etc?  (I never got a copy, so I don't
> have a colophon to look at.)  If this book, published in early 1978,
> was indeed produced on a setup that was only possible with ditroff,
> then why did BWK tell the story of *beginning* ditroff coding work
> (actual implementation, not just thoughts/ideas) in spring of '79 in
> preparation for 202 arriving that summer?

My 16th printing of the 1978 K&R C book says:

     This book was set in Time Roman and Courier 12 by the authors, using 
a
     Graphic Systems phototypesetter driven by a PDP-11/70 running under 
the
     UNIX operating system.

     UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories

Given my understanding of how those pages were made, the 1st ed should 
have
been identical, except that the line showing the "printings" numbers 
would
have looked like:

20  19  18  17  16  15  14  13  12  11 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

And maybe a line that said "first edition"

Subsequent printings would have simply masked out that line and the 
numbers
for the other printings, to where my copy just has the numbers 20 down 
to 16.

FWIW, my 13th printing copy of the 1988 ANSI version of the book says:

     UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T.

     This book was typeset (pic|tbl|eqn|troff -mm) in Times Roman and 
Courier
     by the authors, using an Autologic APS-5 phototypesetter and a DEC 
VAX 8550
     running the 9th Edition of the UNIX® operating system.

My copy of the 1984 _The UNIX Programming Environment_ was typeset on on 
a 202
driven by a VAX 11/750 running the 8th edition.

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX