13 Jan
2022
13 Jan
'22
12:34 a.m.
On 1/12/22 13:06, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
Hi, Dan,
At 2022-01-12T11:33:35-0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> I have some questions about the earlier history.
>
> I've been collecting a detailed narrative history not just of the *roff
> _programs_ but also of the development on the language in the roff(7)
> manual page. Below I'll share a current chunk of it that is planned for
> the next release (groff 1.23). It has been heavily revised since
> groff 1.22.4. Many of my revisions have been motivated by accounts from
> this list, from the "history of man pages" (more of a history of troff)
> at manpages.bsd.lv, and the minnie TUHS archive.
I used RUNOFF on TOPS-10 in 1971, I think, and eventually also on TENEX
and TOPS-20. It probably was available earlier than that. Your history
is covering the Unix side, but there is also a pretty robust DEC side.
It was available on pretty much all the DEC machines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TYPSET_and_RUNOFF has some mentions.
Dan H.