From: dutcher@seas.gwu.edu (Sylvia Dutcher)
Subject: Re: First word processor was Pete Samson's TJ-1, c 1964.
Organization: George Washington University
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 13:45:03 GMT

[The following forwarded from Phil Gagner]
In article <C1BCFp.I1A@world.std.com> dpbsmith@world.std.com (Daniel P. B. Smith) writes:
>
>I'm PRETTY sure that Digital got into typesetting and had a package
>called TYPSET/RUNOFF or something of the sort, TYPSET being the "real"
>typesetter and RUNOFF intended to be the rough-proof-on-fixed-pitch-printer
>tool.  I think these antedated and influenced the UNIX tools, i.e. I
>think the name TROFF is derived from the then-popular RUNOFF.

Digital certainly was into typesetting -- they had a TYPESET-8 system
(based on the PDP-8) in at least dozen, maybe more, newspapers around
the country by 1972.  These used a primative and rather ugly typesetting
language (text/c for center, text/r for right quad, text/l for left quad)
and drove Linotype machines and other such devices.  DEC later developed
TYPESET-10 and TYPESET-11 packages which incorporated video display
editing (Dan Bricklin developed a rather pretty editing terminal based
on the PDP-11/34 while at DEC) and powerful macro abilities.  This was
all true typesetting -- letterspacing, kerning, etc., and was in full
flower around the 1970-1980 period.
  
RUNOFF, on the other hand, was a crock distributed and maintained
by DEC but emasculated and lifted from M.I.T.'s program of the same 
name.  It did basic text formatting (justification using spaces, crufty 
hyphenation, etc.).  DEC used RUNOFF to type its user manuals, which is 
directly reflected in their quality.  Later, many of the manuals were 
prepared using TYPESET-11, and some, mainly the Large Computer Group 
manuals, using TYPESET-10.

>The fancy features in TECO were intended to provide a rich enough
>feature set to make [off-line editing] possible.

This isn't how I remember it.  One of the early features of TECO
was the display editor.  Even without it, the wonderful thing about
TECO was that you could perform wholesale edits of text using simple
commands.  From its inception TECO was interactive, although in the
early days you'd read in (Yank) a buffer of paper tape then Punch
it out (hence the Y and P commands).  TECO was used occassionally
as a batch processor (Gosper's hack to compute continued fractions
using TECO ran for many hours), but only as a "programming language.
The only sense in which it was intended to provide batch operation is
that it was always intended as a programming language for editing.
>
>I can't prove it, but I believe these historical features (paper tape,
>letter-quality upper/lowercase typewriters) influenced the way Digital
>designed products, which in turn influenced some of the thinking of the
>designers of UNIX.  

You're quite correct, but the connection is even more direct.  While
at M.I.T. AI, I maintained TECO and used the other tools.  The people
at DEC were quite close to, and quite aware of, what was going on in
the universities, especially M.I.T.  When I joined DEC I worked on 
the TYPESET projects, and we also rewrote RUNOFF to add the features 
the were in CTSS/Multics versions.  The connection was quite clear in 
my view.  As to their influence on UNIX, I wasn't there so can't 
speak to it, but the tools look pretty similar.  troff and nroff 
borrow heavily from RUNOFF in philosophy, and they appear to borrow 
some macro features from TYPESET-11 (this could be an illusion based 
on the fact that they're doing the same sorts of things). 

				-- Phil Gagner
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