25 Feb
2021
25 Feb
'21
1:38 a.m.
To fill out the historical record, the earliest doctype I know of
was a shell (not rc) script. From my basement heater that happens
to run 10/e:
b$ man doctype | uniq
DOCTYPE(1) DOCTYPE(1)
NAME
doctype - guess command line for formatting a document
SYNOPSIS
doctype [ option ... ] [ file ]
DESCRIPTION
Doctype guesses and prints on the standard output the com-
mand line for printing a document that uses troff(1),
related preprocessors like eqn(1), and the ms(6) and mm
macro packages.
Option -n invokes nroff instead of troff. Other options are
passed to troff.
EXAMPLES
eval `doctype chapter.?` | apsend
Typeset files named chapter.0, chapter.1, ...
SEE ALSO
troff(1), eqn(1), tbl(1), refer(1), prefer(1), pic(1),
ideal(1), grap(1), ped(9.1), mcs(6), ms(6), man(6)
BUGS
It's pretty dumb about guessing the proper macro package.
Page 1 Tenth Edition (printed 2/24/2021)
doctype(1) is in the 8/e manual, so it existed in early 1985;
I bet it's actually older than that. The manual page is on
the V8 tape, but, oddly, not the program; neither is it in
the V10 pseudo-tape I cobbled together for Warren long ago.
I'm not sure why not.
The version in rc is, of course, a B-movie remake of the
original.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON