14 Apr
2020
14 Apr
'20
2:13 a.m.
Indeed the Unix manuals were available as printed
books. Volume One was
the manual pages and Volume Two the articles from /usr/doc.
I remember
seeing soft-cover bound copies of the 7th Edition manuals, ...
I think the next time this happened in the exact same
way was with the
"Unix Research System Tenth Edition" books published by
Saunders College
Publishing in 1990.
Those were the only two that were published as trade books. I still use
the 10th Ed regularly. The 7th Ed was a debacle. The publisher didn't
bother to send us galleys because they had printed straight from troff.
It turned out they did not have the full troff character set, and put
an @ sign in place of each missing character. The whole print run was
done before we saw a copy. Not knowing whether they ever fixed it, I'd
be interested to hear whether or not the botch made it to bookstores.
Doug
14 Apr
14 Apr
5:30 a.m.
New subject: First book on Unix for general readership
On Monday, 13 April 2020 at 22:13:17 -0400, Doug McIlroy wrote:
Those were the only two that were published as trade books. I still use
the 10th Ed regularly. The 7th Ed was a debacle. The publisher didn't
bother to send us galleys because they had printed straight from troff.
It turned out they did not have the full troff character set, and put
an @ sign in place of each missing character. The whole print run was
done before we saw a copy. Not knowing whether they ever fixed it, I'd
be interested to hear whether or not the botch made it to bookstores.
OK, I've dug out my copies. Two volumes, published by CBS College
publishing, aka Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1982, both titled "UNIX
Programmer's Manual". Volume 1 (ISBN 0-03-061742-1) was the man
pages, and volume 2 (ISBN 0-03-061743-X) was the supplementary docs,
starting with â7th Edition UNIX â Summaryâ, dated September 6, 1978.
They have perforated, 3-hole punched pages, clearly intended to be
torn out and put into a three-ring binder.
I've skimmed through both of them, and I can't find any obvious
typesetting errors. "Typesetting Mathematics" shows some quite
complicated equations. And in the quick reference in volume 1, all
the troff special characters seem right, even up to less common
characters such as \(bs. Is there anything specific that I should
look for? Scans available if they would help.
Greg
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5:38 a.m.
New subject: First book on Unix for general readership
On Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:31 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com>
wrote:
On Monday, 13 April 2020 at 22:13:17 -0400, Doug
McIlroy wrote:
Mine are like that too. Maybe it was just wrong for the first printing?
Warner
Greg
Those were the only two that were published as trade books. I still use
the 10th Ed regularly. The 7th Ed was a debacle. The publisher didn't
bother to send us galleys because they had printed straight from troff.
It turned out they did not have the full troff character set, and put
an @ sign in place of each missing character. The whole print run was
done before we saw a copy. Not knowing whether they ever fixed it, I'd
be interested to hear whether or not the botch made it to bookstores.
OK, I've dug out my copies. Two volumes, published by CBS College
publishing, aka Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1982, both titled "UNIX
Programmer's Manual". Volume 1 (ISBN 0-03-061742-1) was the man
pages, and volume 2 (ISBN 0-03-061743-X) was the supplementary docs,
starting with “7th Edition UNIX — Summary†, dated September 6, 1978.
They have perforated, 3-hole punched pages, clearly intended to be
torn out and put into a three-ring binder.
I've skimmed through both of them, and I can't find any obvious
typesetting errors. "Typesetting Mathematics" shows some quite
complicated equations. And in the quick reference in volume 1, all
the troff special characters seem right, even up to less common
characters such as \(bs. Is there anything specific that I should
look for? Scans available if they would help.
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
1565
days inactive
1565
days old
2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
Doug McIlroy -
Greg 'groggy' Lehey -
Warner Losh