Subject: Re: UNIX manpage history: runoff From: Doug McIlroy Date: 23/10/2011 18:41 To: Kristaps Dzonsons >> >> Doug McIlroy, Rudd Canaday, and Dennis Ritchie wrote a version of >> >> runoff for 645 Multics in BCPL, so that the Multics group could >> >> use its own system for documentation. Both of these runoffs took >> >> input lines beginning with dot as command lines. I was definitely not part of the first joint effort to convert runoff. I'm quite sure Morris was. Canaday spent a year in our department about that time, so his participation is possible, I was too confident in writing that that conversion was done in assembly language; BCPL is a possibility. >> >> Bob Morris and Dennis Ritchie moved the BCPL runoff to BTL's >> >> GE-635 and called it roff. McIlroy then wrote a roff from scratch >> >> in BCPL, expanding and improving on runoff; Ken Thompson and >> >> Dennis Ritchie then wrote a machine-language version of roff for >> >> their new system, UNIX, about 1970, to justify the purchase of the >> >> PDP-11. This paragraph, I think, is about as close to the truth as any of us can reconstruct at this distance in time. I have no memory of Ritchie being involved, but then I didn't even know runoff was being ported until it was a fait accompli. I suspect 1971 is a better date than 1970 for Ritchie/Thompson roff--1970 would have been on the PDP7. Dennis is acknowledged in my 1969 memo--for upgrading BCPL "to cope with Runoff's special typographic needs." That memo also cites "GE Runoff"--presumably the Morris (et al) port, with documentation coming from GE, and of course Saltzer. Doug