On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 7:50 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
    > I don't think I ever heard the appellation "phototypesetter C"
    > before.

Interesting data point; thanks for passing that along.
​Indeed.​


 


    > Certainly C and the phottypesetter developed independently, though in
    > the same room. But the explanation that they got linked by appearing in
    > the same tape release makes perfect sense.
I have this vague memory of being told, or reading somewhere, that many of the
changes from 'vanilla V6' C to 'phototypsetter' C were added because they were
needed for that project, hence the name. Alas, I have no idea where I might
have gotten that from (I had a quick look at a few likely documentary sources,
but no joy).
​My memory also.   I may have gotten that from Dennis or srb in conversation at some point​ at an early USENIX conference.


 


It's quite possible that this was a supposition on someone outside Bell's part
(or perhaps inside Bell, but outside the Unix group), because the two came out
in the same tape.
​Yes - in fact why many of us called it "Typesetter C" because the way we got that compiler was with the independent Phototypesetter release from AT&T.   It was all a licensing thing - and the folks in the labs may otohave realized it -- it was a moniker we used outside of the labs to differentiate between the different versions of the compiler in the wild.​

I'm trying to remember all of the details/sequences and frankly, I may not have everything.   But IIRC at CMU I >>believe<< the path we ran 5th, then 6th, got Phototypesetter, then TS, than V7.  i.e. Ken made RK05 images for us for the 5th edition and that was brought up circia 74/75.   They were updated to v6 shortly there after via 9track, IIRC, as was the Phototypsetter code.   tjk brought TS to us on RK05 images on boot-able 9-tracks and V7 was a 1600 bpi tape.

IIRC the CS csv/cret changes were done to a V6 based compiler and then updated to the Phototypesetter compiler.   When Ted brought us TS ( which had a different compiler ) we had to hack the compiler per my previous message.

When V7 was about to be be released we were pumping Ted for info, which he had some but not all what what we wanted to know.   I remember having a conversation with some of the BTL folks a @ USENIX (I think it was with Dennis, but srb may have been part of it also ) asking about the soon to be delivered 7th edition.  Again, IIRC Klein and I were trying to figure out what had be changed and how we CS was going to keep going (dvk's domain) and EE/Mellon Institute (mine own).   The own issue was that CS UNIX systems were lot of mostly 11/40e's with a couple maybe 45's, but EE, Mellon, Bio et all were running 11/34's.   
 


Reading the notes about the upgrades (in particular, "newstuff.nr") makes it
seem like a more likely driver of _some_ of the changes was the Interdata port
(which was also happening at around the same time, if I have the timeline
correct).
​Right -- I'm trying to line up what we were doing around the same period to see if I can help date it a little.​


 
And of course some might have been driven by general utility (e.g.
the ability to initialize structures).
 I want to say the Mergenthaler and the APS5 must have been on the horizon at BTL?  Doug or aps - can either of you offer any enlightenment?   I remember a different conversation with Brian and he saying that when he was were doing the ditroff work and Ken was reverse engineering the mergenthaler, Dennis was adding things to make ditroff easier to write. 

 


It would be interesting to see if anyone remembers why these changes were made.
​We should ask Brian,  I would think, he would have been mixed up in all.

Clem