TUHS

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6444 discussions

Re: [TUHS] man pages, defensive programming, and bibliographic

by Doug McIlroy

> Always use '\&' (a non-printing, zero width character) to > make it clear to the software, that the _function_ of the > character next to it, is neither a sentence-terminating nor > a control one. It is unfortunate that such advice has to be given. One should not have to defend against stupid AI. This is one of only two really unfortunate design choices (in my opinion) in original [nt]roff. (The other is beginning a new page when the vertical position reaches--as distinct from definitively passing--the bottom of a page.) If AI is used, it should be optional. I happen not to like double-width intersentence space, but it keeps getting foisted on me essentially at random. Instead of fattening the manual with annoying duties like that quoted above, I suggest fattening it with a new request, "turn on/off doubling of spaces between apparent sentences", or "put at least the specified space between apparent sentences". One can still use \&, but then it's for a chosen purpose, not just defense against gremlins. Incidentally, "next to" in the quoted advice must be read with care. Sometimes it means before, sometimes after. ------------------------------------------------------------ In this old AI-induced trouble I see a cautionary lesson for paragraph-based line breaking. fmt(1) is an existing program that tries to do this. On unjustified text (i.e. all text handled by fmt) it produces paragraphs of different "optimal" widths, which can be even more distracting than unusually ragged right margins. Doug

5 years, 1 month

Fwd request: Text of Caldera's free licenses for UnixWare/OpenServer

by Warren Toomey

All, I was asked by Max to pass this query on to the TUHS list. Can you e-mail back to Max directly. Thanks, Warren ----- Forwarded message from Maximilian Lorlacks <maxlorlax(a)protonmail.com> ----- Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2020 19:46:38 +0000 From: Maximilian Lorlacks <maxlorlax(a)protonmail.com> To: "wkt(a)tuhs.org" <wkt(a)tuhs.org> Subject: Fwd request: Text of Caldera's free licenses for UnixWare/OpenServer Hi Warren, Could you please forward this to the TUHS list? I'm not a subscriber to the list, but I perhaps someone there might know something about this. In 2001 and early 2002 (I can't believe it's already been almost two decades), Caldera Systems, Inc. offered non-commercial licenses at no cost for OpenServer 5.0.6, UnixWare 7.1(.1?) and Open UNIX 8. However, the web archive could not to capture the actual agreement hidden behind the entrypoint form. I failed to get a license during that time since I wasn't really interested in UNIX at that point, but in the interest of historical preservation, I'm interested if anyone got those licenses from back then and if so, if they've saved the actual license agreement text. I'm interested in what it reads. I'm also curious about whether the license keys from back then still work with Xinuos's new registration platform, but it's probably too much to ask for people to test that. Please note that I am *not* trying to revive the trainwreck that is the issue of the validity and scope of the Ancient UNIX license. The only way to properly resolve that would be a letter signed from Micro Focus's legal department, but they've made it exceedingly clear that they will persistently ignore any and all attempts to elicit any kind of response regarding Ancient UNIX. Cheers, Max ----- End forwarded message -----

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] [TUHS} More Spider

by Doug McIlroy

> It might be worth mentioning that the Cambridge Ring (in the UK) used a very > similar idea: a head end circulated empty frames which stations could fill in. I'm quite sure the similarity is not accidental. Fraser began the Spider project almost immediately upon moving from Cambridge to Bell Labs. Doug

5 years, 1 month

Screen editors

by Paul Ruizendaal

> > On Jan 26, 2020, at 11:28 AM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > > > > "Jose R. Valverde via TUHS" <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote: > > > >> Talking of editors... > >> > >> On ancient UNIX, my editor of choice was 's' from Software Tools, its > >> main advantage being that it didn't require curses. > > > > That editor was from "A Software Tools Sampler" by Webb Miller, not > > "Software Tools" by Kernighan and Plauger. > Well, that would explain why I couldn’t find it. Do you have softcopy of the editor source? I’d really like a screen editor for v7…. Adam So do I. Editor source seems to be here: https://github.com/udo-munk/s If you are doing a build for V7, I’d be interested in hearing the results.

5 years, 1 month

More Spider

by Paul Ruizendaal

I noted with much pleasure that the main bitsavers site is back up, and that at some point it has added a full set of scans of “Datamation”. The Feb 1975 issue contains an article from Dr. Fraser about Spider and the network setup in Murray Hill early in 1975: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/datamation/197502.pdf For ease of reference I have also temporarily put the relevant 4 pages of the issue here: https://gitlab.com/pnru/spider/blob/master/spider.pdf I find the graphic that shows how Spider connected machines and departments the most interesting, as it helps understand how the pro’s and con’s of Arpa Unix might have been perceived at that time. The more I read, the more confused I become whether the “Pierce loop” was a precursor to “Spider” or a parallel effort. The facts appear to be that John Pierce (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Pierce) submitted his paper to BSTJ in December 1970, essentially describing a loop network with fixed size short datagrams, suggesting T1 frames. It is quite generic. In February 1971 W.J. Kropfl submits a paper that describes an implementation of the ideas in the Pierce paper with actual line protocols and a TIU. In October 1971 C.H. Coker describes in a 3rd paper how to interact with this TIU from a H516 programming perspective. Several Spider papers mention that the project was started in 1969 and that the first Spider link was operational in 1972. The team appears to be entirely different: the h/w is credited to Condon and Weller, and the s/w to Frazer, Jensen and Plaugher. The Spider TIU is much more complex (200 TTL chips vs. 50 in the Kropfl TIU). The main reason for that - at first glance - appears to be that in the Spider network the TIU handled guaranteed in order delivery (i.e managed time outs and retransmissions), whereas in the Kropfl implementation this was left to the hosts. It would seem logical that the latter was an evolution of the former, having been developed at the same site at the same time. A 1981 book seems to take that view as well: “Local Computer Network Technologies” by Carl Tropper includes the text "Spider Spider is an experimental data communications network which was built at the Bell Telephone Laboratories (Murray Hill, New Jersey) under the direction of A. G. Fraser. A detailed description of the network is given by Fraser [FRAS74]. This network was built with the notion of investigating Pierce's idea of ...” The chapter is titled “The Pierce loop and its derivatives”. This is a much as Google will give me - if somebody has the book please let me know. On the other hand, the Spider papers do not mention the Kropfl network or Pierce’s paper at all. The graphic in Datamation appears to show two Kropfl loops as part of the network setup. Yet, this is described in the accompanying text as "4. Honeywell 5l6: Supports research into comunications techniques and systems. The machine has a serial loop I/O bus threaded through several labs at Murray Hill. Equipment under test is connected either directly to the bus or to a minicomputer which is then connected to the bus. Also avail- able are graphics display terminals and a device that can write read-only memory chips.” Maybe this is a different bus, but if it is the same as the Kropfl loop, to call it a “serial loop I/O bus” suggests it was a parallel effort unrelated to Spider. Does anybody on the list recall whether Spider was a parallel effort or a continuation of the earlier work?

5 years, 1 month

A Dennisism

by Doug McIlroy

The anecdote below came from Nils-Peter Nelson, who as a manager in the computer center bought and installed the Labs' biggest Unix machine, a Cray 2. He also originated the string.h package. Doug Dennis told me he was going to a class reunion at Harvard. Me: "I guess you're the most famous member of your class." dmr: "No, the Unabomber is.

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] More Spider

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Ruizendaal > a loop network with fixed size short datagrams It might be worth mentioning that the Cambridge Ring (in the UK) used a very similar idea: a head end circulated empty frames which stations could fill in. I think it started slightly later, though. Material about it is available online. Noel

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Spider

by Paul Ruizendaal

> Ugh. Memory lane has a lot of potholes. This was a really long time ago. Many thanks for that post - really interesting! I had to look up "Pierce Network", and found it described in the Bell Journal: https://ia801903.us.archive.org/31/items/bstj51-6-1133/bstj51-6-1133_text.p… In my reading the Spider network is a type of Pierce network. However, the network that you remember is indeed most likely different from Spider: - it was coax based, whereas the Spider line was a twisted pair - there was more than one, whereas Spider only ever had one (operational) loop Condon and Weller are acknowledged in the report about Spider as having done many of its hardware details. The report discusses learnings from the project and having to tune repeaters is not among them (but another operational issue with its 'line access modules’ is discussed). All in all, maybe these coax loops were pre-cursors to the Spider network, without a switch on the loop (“C” nodes in the Pierce paper). It makes sense to first try out the electrical and line data protocol before starting work on higher level functions. I have no idea what a GLANCE G is...

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Unix quix

by Doug McIlroy

The first edition ran on pdp-11, not pdp-7. Tukey buttered parsnips at the labs, but Brits did so several centuries before. Contrary to urban legend, patent was not invoked to justify the Unix pdp-11; word-processing was. The quiz does not make this mistake. The phototypesetter did not smell. The chemicals for (externally) devoloping photo paper did. Shahpazian is Dick Shahpazian; Maranzano is Joe Maranzano. cagbef addresses out of bounds. I appreciate Rob's discretion about the Waterloo theft. Doug

5 years, 1 month

[TUHS/groff] Provenance of .SB macro in man pages

by G. Branden Robinson

Hi folks, I've been adding a history subsection to the groff_man(7) page for the next groff release (date TBD) and thanks to the TUHS archives I've been able to answer almost all the questions I had about the origins of the man(7) language's macros and registers (number and string). I'm inlining my findings in rendered and source form below, but there's one feature I haven't been able to sort out--where did .SB (small bold) come from? The oldest groff release I can find online is 1.02 (June 1991), and .SB is already there, but I can't find it anywhere else. Is it a GNUism? Did it perhaps appear in a proprietary Unix first? I'm aware of Kristaps Dzonsons's history of Unix man pages[1], but unfortunately for me that is more of a history of the *roff system(s), and does not have much detail about the evolution of the man(7) macro language itself. If you can shed any light on this, I'd appreciate it! History Version 7 Unix (1979) supported all of the macros described in this page not listed as extensions, except .P, .SB, and the deprecated .AT and .UC. The only string registers defined were R and S; no number registers were documented. .UC appeared in 3BSD (1980) and .P in AT&T Unix System III (1980). 4BSD (1980) added lq and rq string registers. 4.3BSD (1986) added .AT and AT&T's .P. DEC Ultrix 11 (1988) added the Tm string register. .\" ==================================================================== .SS History .\" ==================================================================== . Version\~7 Unix (1979) supported all of the macros described in this page not listed as extensions, except .BR .P , .BR .SB , .\" .SS was implemented in tmac.an but not documented in man(7). and the deprecated .BR .AT and .BR .UC . . The only string registers defined were .B R and .BR S ; no number registers were documented. . .B .UC appeared in 3BSD (1980) and .B .P in AT&T Unix System\~III (1980). . 4BSD (1980) added .\" undocumented .VS and .VE macros to mark regions with 12-point box .\" rules (\[br]) as margin characters, as well as... .B lq and .B rq string registers. . 4.3BSD (1986) added .\" undocumented .DS and .DE macros for "displays", which are .RS/.RE .\" wrappers with filling disabled and vertical space of 1v before and .\" .5v after, as well as... .B .AT and AT&T's .BR .P . . DEC Ultrix\~11 (1988) added the .B Tm string register. . .\" TODO: Determine provenance of .SB. Regards, Branden [1] https://manpages.bsd.lv/history.html

5 years, 1 month

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