Re: [TUHS] Re: Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2024-01-18T01:22:53+1100, John Gardner wrote:
> > If you don't have my scan of CSTR #54 (1976) […] let me know and
> > I'll send it along.
> 
> I have a copy named CSTR_54_1976.pdf with a SHA256 checksum of
> 71d8592991635966cc86a184d7a5b07163298a53c2a900fa0e9bf1a3eabeeb7d. Is
> this it?

Yup, same one I have.

> It's decent-enough quality, but I wanted to check to make sure there
> wasn't a higher-resolution copy I could be working off. So, no
> complaints. How urgently are the C/A/T typefaces needed?

For me, there's no urgency at all.  What I would ultimately do with such
a set of fonts is use them for A/B comparisons with groff renderings of
old Unix documents typeset by the C/A/T, so that:

1.  I can identify differences between Ossanna troff, Kernighan troff,
    and groff; and
2.  retypeset such documents, and make whatever claims are appropriate
    regarding groff's fidelity to the original renderings.  Claims in
    this area to date appear to be either approximate, or emotionally
    overwrought and nonempirical.

> It *does* have awk(1) and sed(1), IIRC, which I can get by with for
> most text-wrangling tasks. :)

It was pointed out to me in private mail that Perl 1 can still be found
online, and should build for Seventh Edition Unix.  Here's a
"modernized" specimen that was easy to locate.

https://github.com/AnaTofuZ/Perl-1.0

Going to be hard not to go down a rathole studying that today...the
prospect of a Perl small enough to be comprehended by a single mortal is
a seductive notion.

> I'll probably need you to review any shims I write for any C89+
> stdio(3) functions that don't exist in V7's C compiler (which is
> surprisingly limited)…

Alex Colomar might be interested.  He seems to enjoy turning a critical
eye toward C fundamentals, scandalizing old scripture-thumpers.

Regards,
Branden

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