Von: Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com>
Datum: 31.12.2021 17:15:06
An: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Betreff: [TUHS] learn command in v7

I'm pretty sure that I asked about learn ages back, but I couldn't find any reference to it in the archives. So, I thought I would close the possibly imaginary loop on it. Cuz, I figured it out, and it may prove useful to others or with my track record, even myself in the future :).

Learn works fine in v7. It just needs to be properly installed. The command is there already, so you may not need to follow all of the steps below, but it doesn't hurt:

I did this as root, but it could possibly be done as another user, I'm not sure.
 

cd /usr/src/cmd/learn
make
make lessons
make play; make log

That's it. make will complain about missing files that it tries to delete, but these can be safely ignored, since make then creates them anyway.

Here's the result run as a normal user:

$ learn
These are the available courses -
  files
  editor
  morefiles
  macros
  eqn
  C
If you want more information about the courses,
or if you have never used 'learn' before,
type 'return'; otherwise type the name of
the course you want, followed by 'return'.
macros
If you were in the middle of this subject
and want to start where you left off, type
the last lesson number the computer printed.
To start at the beginning, just hit return.

This script deals with the use of the "-ms" macro
package to produce Bell Laboratories style documents.
Before trying it, you should be familiar with the
editor.  To test that, please enter the file
typed below, exactly as is, into file "decl".  Then
type "ready".

.PP
When in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the
powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which
the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
$ ed decl
?decl
a
.PP
When in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the
powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which
the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
.
w
410
q
$ ready

Good.  Lesson 1.1a (1)

When you have some document typed in "-ms" style,
you run it off on your terminal by saying:

  nroff -ms file

where "file" is the name of the file it is on.  For example,
the file "decl" in this directory is in a suitable format
for running off this way.  Do so.  Then type "ready".
$
Interrupt.
Want to go on?  n
Bye.
$
 

Pretty slick, really, once you realize that the $ prompt isn't really your shell, it's a shell within learn. Also, there's no learn manpage although there is a document in vol2 of the programmer's manual that describes the program. I couldn't figure out the canonical way to exit, so I just CTRL-DELETE on my mac, which I figure it CTRL-BREAK (^C?). That seems to work.

Oh, and according to /usr/src/cmd/learn/README, if you have any trouble:

Please report problems, bad lessons, etc., to
Brian Kernighan, MH 6021, 2C-518, or
Mike Lesk, MH 6377, 2C-572.  Thanks.

Enjoy, and happy New Year, folks!

Will