14 May
2018
14 May
'18
5:10 p.m.
Hi.
Doug McIlroy <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
From this distant point in time it seems that it all
happened in a couple
of weeks. Joe Ossanna did most of the teaching, and no doubt supplied
samples to copy. As far as I know the only other instructional materials
would have been man pages and the nroff manual (forbiddingly terse,
though thorough). He may have made a patent-macro package, but I doubt
it; I think honor for the first real macro package goes to Lesk's -ms.
Wouldn't the -man macros have predated -ms?
Agreed, -man isn't for full-fledged "regular" documents and papers, but
in terms of removing the need for low-level *roff markup, it certainly
does the job.
(Of course, that may be what you meant by saying "the first *real* macro
package ...")
Thanks!
Arnold