Re: [TUHS] troff was not so widely usable (was: The UNIX Command Language (1976))

["Ron Natalie" <ron@ronnatalie.com>]

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It's important to know the difference between a font and a typeface.    
A typeface isn't protectable.  That's the representation of the actual 
letters on the printed page (or screen in our case).     George was free 
to scan the output of the phototypesetter.

The font is the process to make these (in modern days small programs 
that generate the letters).  This is what can be protected by copyright.

The name can be protected by trademark as well.    HELVETICA is a 
trademark (now) of Mergenthaler Linotype.    Arial is a similar typeface 
but that name is owned by Monotype.

Straying a little from the topic, a real Linotype machine is a joy to 
behold.   They have one at the Baltimore Museum of Science and Industry 
that they still fire up weekly.   What it does is integrate a keyboard 
with the actual fonts (molds for molten lead) and casts a line of type 
(hence the name) at a time.   After it does so, the molds go back into 
sorted hoppers for further use.

To answer the other question about George Toth at JHU.   He was our 
documetnation guy and went off to work for Airinc or something.  I've 
not heard from him in a long time.    We continued to use his verset and 
a versatec for a while with straight troff.   I also hacked it to draw 
on the framebuffers in BRL's graphics labs.    Later more fonts became 
available from the Berkeley vcat/vtroff.   Ditroff allowed direct 
selection of mutliple fonts as opposed to having to hack on the 
"railmag" file (remember that guys?).

Standard troff voodoo, just put a power of two backslashes in front of 
it until it works and if you still have problems add a \c.

-Ron

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