I was just the other day apprised of the fact that
Warren Toomey had finally got permission to make public
sources from Eight, Ninth and Tenth Edition Unix. It
was Paul McJones from the Software Preservation Group
who made me aware of this because some months ago I was
in touch with him in regard to the status of source for
'pads/pi' which is on the SPG website. That was donated
by Bjorn Stroustrup in 2004 I believe, as an example of
a large C++ project, along with sources for 'cfront'.
I myself have been working on pads/pi in a desultory
fashion since 1990 when I left the Basser Department of
Computer Science at the University of Sydney; we had an
Eighth Edition licence, hence source code, and all of
the blit/jerq utilities.
I ported 'pads' to the Plan9 graphics model many years
ago, and finally started to port 'pi' to Solaris 11 a
couple of years ago. This works in a rudimentary
fashion, but needs a Dwarf interface.
Given that Bjorn Stroustrup released this code long ago
(a much later version than what I had), I daresay there
are no problems with its publication.
I have, however, also worked on 'samuel' and ported its
functionality to the Plan9 'sam'. 'samuel' does not
appear in any of the archives that Wareen Toomey has
made available, so I am wondering what its status may
be. It was written by John Puttress at the labs in the
late '80s, when he was apparently working under Ted
Kowalski. Ted Kowalski is also a 'person of interest'
because he wrote 'cin', the C interpreter, an interface
to which exists in 'samuel'. Ted Kowalski
unfortunately passed away some years ago and no-one
seems to know where the source is. It again, isn't in
any of the archives that Wareen Toomey has been able to
make available.
If anyone has any information about 'samuel' or 'cin',
I would be delighted to hear from him or her.
Bruce Ellis, who wrote 'cyntax', told me that he worked
on 'cin' a lot (in the '90s I think, when he worked at
Bell Labs) but it was succeeded by something named
'vice', about which I can find no information. Again, I
would be grateful for any information about this.
Regards,