Re: [TUHS] Re: Documenting a set of functions with -man

[Steve Izma]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 11:13:36AM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Re: Documenting a set of functions with -man
> 
> At 2024-06-25T08:51:39-0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> > Since the C/A/T held only four fonts, there was no room for
> > Courier.
> ...
> I had assumed that Kernighan & Ritchie got their hands on a
> CAT-8 during the course of preparing _The C Programming
> Language_ (1978), since it exhibited use of Courier (upright,
> normal weight only) alongside Times: roman and italic, and, for
> headings, bold.
> ...
> So maybe they had access to a CAT-8 after all, and used a
> whopping 5 different font plates.  Or they used a CAT-4 and had
> to compose many pages in two passes.  That would have been
> mightily tedious.

I've never been anywhere near a CAT phototypesetter, but I doubt
that any phototypesetter was capable of handling all the
phototypesetting paper needed to print a book in one pass --
either the input or the output cassettes holding the paper had
limitations (although I know one company that put their VIP
phototypesetters inside a darkroom and let the film or paper
run out into a big box, but they still needed to have someone
replace the input cassettes).

We would generally set no more than a chapter at once. Changing
fonts between runs like that was no big deal.

The earliest phototypesetter we had, a Compugraphic (I think a
2940, in 1971), only allowed one or two fonts at a time. I think
that it actually signalled the operator in the middle of a job
when a new font was needed (that's a vague memory).

In any case, I think it was common for publications to use more
fonts than a machine could handle at one time. Lots of things
were patched in at paste-up time.

        -- Steve

-- 
Steve Izma
-
Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada  N2H 1W6
Temporary residence: 36 Locust St., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada  N2H 1W7
E-mail: sizma@golden.net  cellphone: 519-998-2684

==
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and
therefore never scrutinize or question.
    -- Stephen Jay Gould, *Full House: The Spread of Excellence
       from Plato to Darwin*, 1996