21 May
2014
21 May
'14
11:13 a.m.
From: Richard
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 9:49 PM
In article
<CAEfH1SFQwgcxieLQRMP7tm_Opi7fH_L+piO18FcWAueur6_y2Q at mail.gmail.com>,
Jason T <silent700 at gmail.com> writes:
> Still, there's a chance they were derived from
existing Latex or some
> other old file.
The more I think about it, the more I think troff may
have been used.
It was for typesetting, after all :-)
What, and (La)TeX wasn't??? ;-)
Rich
21 May
21 May
4:32 p.m.
In article <539CFBE84C931A4E8516F3BBEA36C7AA0185871F16 at 505MBX2.corp.vnw.com>,
Rich Alderson <RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org> writes:
troff was dominant in unix typesetting before TeX become prominent.
Relevant wikipedia pages:
1964 RUNOFF <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RUNOFF>
1976 troff <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troff#cite_note-1>
1978 TeX <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX>
1981 ditroff <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troff>
I don't think TeX gained widespread popularity until TeX82 in 1982. I
remember first encountering it around 1983/1984 as an undergraduate.
Given that all the man pages were written in troff with the 'an' macro
set, I think most pre-internet unix users were introduced to troff long
before TeX and certainly before LaTeX.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book
<http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
The Computer Graphics Museum <http://ComputerGraphicsMuseum.org>
The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org>
Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://LegalizeAdulthood.wordpress.com>
From: Richard
The more I
think about it, the more I think troff may have been used.
It was for typesetting, after all :-)
What, and (La)TeX wasn't??? ;-) 
22 May
22 May
5:34 a.m.
On 21/05/14 2:13 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
From: Richard
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 9:49 PM
He means I think that Unix was originally pitched as a document
processing system - before TeX existed. Troff is considerably more
primitive. TeX has more ambitious goals and is far more powerful and
versatile.
Anyway, while the poster galleys may have been set in troff then
photoset to bromide (like, say, other Unix documents such as K&R; it
looks like photoset Times to me, as Richard observed), the poster was
almost certainly pasted up by hand then used as art for a standard
photomechanical workflow.
It is basically inconceivable pre-PostScript that the poster layout or
the illustration existed whole digitally, there were no tools for this
in standard Unix.
--Toby
In article
<CAEfH1SFQwgcxieLQRMP7tm_Opi7fH_L+piO18FcWAueur6_y2Q at mail.gmail.com>,
Jason T <silent700 at gmail.com> writes:
> Still, there's a chance they were derived
from existing Latex or some
> other old file.
The more I think about it, the more I think troff
may have been used.
It was for typesetting, after all :-)
What, and (La)TeX wasn't??? ;-)
Rich
3819
days inactive
3820
days old
2 comments
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legalize＠xmission.com -
RichA＠LivingComputerMuseum.org -
toby＠telegraphics.com.au