Hello,
I'm curious about the history of "top". As far as I can see, the first
version was written by William LeFebvre and posted to net.sources in
1984. I'm surprised it appeared that late. Were there any other
versions or similar Unix programs before that?
Best regards,
Lars Brinkhoff
All, I've just received the following e-mail. I am not able to physically
get these documents, but if you are interested in them, feel free to contact
Mel yourself.
Cheers, Warren
----- Forwarded message from meljmel-unix(a)yahoo.com -----
Date: Wed, 23 May 2018 13:30:09 +1000 (AEST)
From: meljmel-unix(a)yahoo.com
To: Warren T <wkt(a)tuhs.org>
Subject: Old Unix manuals, TMs, etc
Hi,
I started working at Bell Labs in 1971 and although
not in the computing science research department, I
was in another department down the hall. As a result
I have many old Unix manuals, TM's and other papers
that I wish to dispose of. I found you when I did a
search to see if there was anyone who might want them.
Appended below is a list of what I have. If you are
interested in any of it or know who else might be, please
let me know. If I can't find anyone to take them I guess
I'll just throw them out.
Mel
meljmel-unix(a)yahoo.com
==========
These are the old Unix Manuals I have:
UNIX PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL
Program Generic PG-1C300 Issue 2
Published by the UNIX Support Group
January, 1976
UNIX PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL
Program Generic PG-1C300 Issue 3
Published by the UNIX Support Group
March, 1977
UNIX User's Manual
Release 3.0
T.A. Dolotta
S. B. Olsson
A.G. Petrucceli
Editors
June 1980
Laboratory 364
Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated
Murray Hill, NJ 07974
The C Programmer's Handbook
AT&T Bell Laboratories
February 1984
M. I. Bolsky
P. G. Matthews
System Training Center
Copyright 1984
Piscataway, New Jersey 08854
Unix System V Quick Reference Guide
Copyright 1985 AT&T Technologies, Inc
307-130
UNIX TIME-SHARING SYSTEM
PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL
Research Version
Ninth Edition, Volume 1
September, 1986
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Murray Hill, New Jersey
The Vi User's Handbook
by Morris I. Bolsky
Systems Training Center
Copyright 1984 AT&T Bell Laboratories Incorporated
Copyright 1985 AT&T Technologies, Inc
Unix Research System Programmer's Manual
Tenth Edition, Volume I
Computing Science Research Center
Murray Hill, New Jersey
1990, American Telephone and Telegraph Company
Bell Laboratories Division
ISBN 0-03-047532-5
A. G. Hume
M. D. McIlroy
October, 1989
Unix Research System Papers
Tenth Edition, Volume II
Computing Science Research Center
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Murray Hill, New Jersey
1990, American Telephone and Telegraph Company
Bell Laboratories Division
ISBN 0-03-047529-5
A. G. Hume
M. D. McIlroy
January, 1990
----------
These are old Unix Technical Memorandum and Papers I have:
The C Reference Manual
January 15, 1974
TM: 74-1273-1
D. M. Ritchie
Programming in LIL: A Tutorial
June 17, 1974
TM: 74-1352-6
LIL Reference Manual
June 19, 1974
TM: 74-1352-8
A Description of the UNIX File System
September 16, 1975
Author J. F. Maranzano
The Portable C Library
May 16, 1975
TM: 75-1274-11
Author: M. E. Lesk
Lex - A Lexical Analyzer Generator
July 21, 1975
TM: 75-1274-15
Author: M. E. Lesk
Introduction to Scheduling and Switching under UNIX
October 20, 1975
TM: 75-8234-7
Author: T. M. Raleigh
Make - A program for Maintaining Computer Programs
December 5, 1975
TM: 75-1274-26
Author: S. I. Feldman
UNIX Programming
Brian w. Kernighan
Denis M. Ritchie
? 1975 ?
Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
"This paper is an introduction to programming on Unix.
The emphasis is on how to write programs that interface
to the operating system."
The C Language Calling Sequence
September 26, 1977
TMs: 77-1273-15, 77-1274-13
Authors: A.C. Johnson, D.M. Ritchie, M.E. Lesk
Lint, a C Program Checker
September 16, 1977
TM: 77-1273-14
Author: S. C. Johnson
The M4 Macor Processor
April 1, 1977
TM: 77-1273-6
Authors: Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie
C Reference Manual
Dennis M. Ritchie
May 1, 1977
Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
C Language Portability
September 22, 1977
Author: B. A. Tague
Variable Length Argument Lists in C
June 12, 1978
Author: Andrew Koenig
An Introduction to the UNIX Shell
July 21, 1978
TM: 78-1274-4
Author: S.R. Bourne
SED - A Non-Interactive Text Editor
August 15, 1978
TM: 78-1270-1
Author: Lee E. McMahon
UNIX Shell Tutorial
July 14, 1981
TM: 81-59322-5
Author: J. R. Mashey
Awk - A pattern Scanning and Processing Language
Programmer's Manual
June 19, 1985
Authors: Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan, Peter J. Weinberger
TMs: 11272-850619-06TM, 11276-850619-09TM, 11273-850619-03TM
Yacc: Yet Another Compiler-Compiler
July 31. 1978
TM: 78-1273-4
Author: Stephen C. Johnson
RATFOR - A Preprocessor for a Rational Fortran
October 22, 1976
TM: 76-1273-10
Author Brian W. Kernighan
Miscellaneous undated (but old) papers:
On the Security of UNIX
Dennis M. Ritchie
A New Input-Output Package
D. M. Ritchie
The Unix I/O System
Dennis M. Ritchie
Programming in C - A tutorial
Brian W. Kernighan
? Date ?
==========
----- End forwarded message -----
WHo'll be the first to run our favourite OS with one of these?
http://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11-technical-details
``From a hardware perspective, the PiDP is just a frontpanel for a
Raspberry PI. In the hardware section below, the technical details of the
front panel are explained. In fact, the front panel could just as easily
be driven by any microcontroller (or FPGA), it only lights the leds and
scans the switch positions.''
-- Dave
I had an e-mail from someone who said:
PDP-11 Sys V is apparently derived from Unix CB 3.0, not from the
normal route... Or so says the great interweb :)
I found a family tree that suggests this. Know anything about this?
I hadn't heard of this before, can anybody substantiate or negate this
assertion, or shed more light on the genealogy od PDP-11 System V?
Thanks, Warren
I have read that one of the first groups in AT&T to use early Unix was
the legal dep't, specifically to use *roff to write patent
applications. Can anyone elaborate on this or supply references?
(This would in great contrast to today, where most applications are
written with certain products despite the USPTO, EPO, and others only
accepting PDF versions.) It would also be interesting to learn how
the writers were taught *roff, what editors were used, and what they
thought. (I recall that the secretaries, as they were then called, in
the math dep't used vi to compose plain TeX documents and xdvi to
proofread them.)
N.
>Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 10:05:24 -0400
>From: Doug McIlroy <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu>
>To: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
>Cc: lorinda.cherry(a)gmail.com
>Subject: Re: [TUHS] PWB - what is the history?
>Message-ID: <201805161405.w4GE5OeJ012025(a)coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
<snip>
>They were in WWB (writers workbench) not PWB (programmers workbench).
>WWB was a suite of Unix programs, organized by Nina MacDonald of USG.
>It appeared in various Unix versions, including research v8-v10.
>
>Lorinda Cherry in research wrote most of the basic tools in WWB,
...
I see Ms. Cherry also has a wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorinda_Cherry which has "Cherry raced
rally cars as a hobby".
and the page contains a link to an interesting document which brings
us back to the PWB
"A Research UNIX Reader:
Annotated Excerpts from the Programmer’s Manual,
1971-1986
M. Douglas McIlroy"
- uncle rubl
> I think you mean 'style' and 'diction'. I thought those came from
research? I
> remember seeing papers about them in a manual; maybe 7th Ed or 4.2/4.3BSD?
They were in WWB (writers workbench) not PWB (programmers workbench).
WWB was a suite of Unix programs, organized by Nina MacDonald of USG.
It appeared in various Unix versions, including research v8-v10.
Lorinda Cherry in research wrote most of the basic tools in WWB,
most notably style, diction, and the really cool "parts" that
underlay style. William Vesterman at Rutgers suggested style and
diction. Having parts up her sleeve, Lorinda was able to turn them out
almost overnight. Most anyone else would scarcely have known how to
begin to make style.
Just yesterday Lorinda received a Pioneer in Tech award from the National
Center for Women in IT. Parts and eqn, both initiated by her, certainly
justify that honor.
[Parts did a remarkable job of tagging text with parts of speech, without
getting bogged down in the swamp of parsing English. It was largely
implemented in sed--certainly one of the grander programs written in that
language. Style reported statistics like length of words, frequency of
adjectives, and variety of sentence structure. Diction flagged cliches
and other common infelicities. WWB offered advice based on the findings
of these and other text-analysis programs.]
Doug
> Wouldn't the -man macros have predated -ms?
Indeed. My error.
The original -man package was quite weak. It got a major face
lift for v7 and once more at v9 or so. And further man-page
packages are still duking it out today. -ms has lots of rivals,
too, but its continued popularity attests to Mike Lesk's fine
sense of design.
Doug
> From: Nemo
> I have read that one of the first groups in AT&T to use early Unix was
> the legal dep't, specifically to use *roff to write patent applications.
> Can anyone elaborate on this or supply references?
Are you familiar with the description in Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of
the Unix Time-sharing System":
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.htm
(in the section "The first PDP-11 system")? Not a great deal of detail, but...
> It would also be interesting to learn how the writers were taught *roff,
> what editors were used
I'm pretty sure 'ed' was the only editor available at that point.
Noel
