First edition Unix manuals

Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 16:01:21 +0100
Message-Id: <199805061501.QAA08913@todday.aiai.ed.ac.uk>
From: Tim Bradshaw < tfb@aiai.ed.ac.uk>
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Subject: First edition Unix manuals
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In case other people haven't seen this, Dennis Ritchie has (scanned)
versions of these at:

	http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~dmr

--tim

From: Warren Toomey < wkt@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Message-Id: <199805062049.GAA03699@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Subject: Re: First edition Unix manuals
To: tfb@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Tim Bradshaw)
Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 06:49:24 +1000 (EST)
Cc: pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (PDP Unix Preservation)
In-Reply-To: <199805061501.QAA08913@todday.aiai.ed.ac.uk> from Tim Bradshaw at "May 6, 98 04:01:21 pm"
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In article by Tim Bradshaw:
> In case other people haven't seen this, Dennis Ritchie has (scanned)
> versions of these at:
> 
> 	http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~dmr
> 
> --tim

Thanks Tim!

	Warren

Message-ID: <19980507083416.B396@freebie.lemis.com>
Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 08:34:16 +0930
From: Greg Lehey < grog@lemis.com>
To: Tim Bradshaw < tfb@aiai.ed.ac.uk>, pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
Subject: Re: First edition Unix manuals
References: <199805061501.QAA08913@todday.aiai.ed.ac.uk>
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On Wed,  6 May 1998 at 16:01:21 +0100, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> In case other people haven't seen this, Dennis Ritchie has (scanned)
> versions of these at:
>
> 	http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~dmr

Somebody else posted this a few days ago.  Does anybody know how to
view them?  They're in .gif format, and xv only shows me the first
page.

Greg
--
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From: "Robert D. Keys" < rdkeys@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
Message-Id: <199805071305.JAA02117@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: First edition Unix manuals
In-Reply-To: <19980507083416.B396@freebie.lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "May 7, 98 08:34:16 am"
To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey)
Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 09:05:02 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: tfb@aiai.ed.ac.uk, pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
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> On Wed,  6 May 1998 at 16:01:21 +0100, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> > In case other people haven't seen this, Dennis Ritchie has (scanned)
> > versions of these at:
> >
> > 	http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~dmr
> 
> Somebody else posted this a few days ago.  Does anybody know how to
> view them?  They're in .gif format, and xv only shows me the first
> page.
> 
> Greg

He put up postscript versions, too.

I emailed him about the possibility of recreating the roff sources,
an I will probably wind up doing that.  Then we will have a working
set of sources for clean copy.

Bob Keys

Message-ID: <19980508083236.N12200@freebie.lemis.com>
Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 08:32:36 +0930
From: Greg Lehey < grog@lemis.com>
To: "Robert D. Keys" < rdkeys@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
Cc: tfb@aiai.ed.ac.uk, pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
Subject: Re: First edition Unix manuals
References: <19980507083416.B396@freebie.lemis.com> <199805071305.JAA02117@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
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WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog
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On Thu,  7 May 1998 at  9:05:02 -0400, Robert D. Keys wrote:
>> On Wed,  6 May 1998 at 16:01:21 +0100, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
>>> In case other people haven't seen this, Dennis Ritchie has (scanned)
>>> versions of these at:
>>>
>>> 	http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~dmr
>>
>> Somebody else posted this a few days ago.  Does anybody know how to
>> view them?  They're in .gif format, and xv only shows me the first
>> page.
>>
>> Greg
>
> He put up postscript versions, too.

I don't see them at
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/1stEdman.html.  Where are they?

> I emailed him about the possibility of recreating the roff sources,
> an I will probably wind up doing that.  Then we will have a working
> set of sources for clean copy.

Great idea.  Keep us posted.

Greg
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From: "Robert D. Keys" < rdkeys@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
Message-Id: <199805081328.JAA03767@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: First edition Unix manuals
In-Reply-To: <19980508083236.N12200@freebie.lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "May 8, 98 08:32:36 am"
To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey)
Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 09:28:40 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: tfb@aiai.ed.ac.uk, pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
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> On Thu,  7 May 1998 at  9:05:02 -0400, Robert D. Keys wrote:
> > I emailed him about the possibility of recreating the roff sources,
> > an I will probably wind up doing that.  Then we will have a working
> > set of sources for clean copy.
> 
> Great idea.  Keep us posted.
> 
> Greg

I have the intro and first few manpages of section 1 done so far.
Maybe a week or so and then if someone will proof them.  I will
port them in original roff source, and then make a troff set.
Dennis was wanting someone to tackle an html version.  Alas, my
html is not so good.

Bob

Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 15:08:38 +0100 (BST)
From: Alan Bain < afrb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk>
To: "Robert D. Keys" < rdkeys@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
cc: Greg Lehey < grog@lemis.com>, tfb@aiai.ed.ac.uk, pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
Subject: Re: First edition Unix manuals
In-Reply-To: <199805081328.JAA03767@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
Message-ID: < Pine.SOL.3.95q.980508150740.5409B-100000@red.csi.cam.ac.uk>
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On Fri, 8 May 1998, Robert D. Keys wrote:

> > On Thu,  7 May 1998 at  9:05:02 -0400, Robert D. Keys wrote:
> > > I emailed him about the possibility of recreating the roff sources,
> > > an I will probably wind up doing that.  Then we will have a working
> > > set of sources for clean copy.
> > 
> > Great idea.  Keep us posted.
> > 
> > Greg
> 
> I have the intro and first few manpages of section 1 done so far.
> Maybe a week or so and then if someone will proof them.  I will
> port them in original roff source, and then make a troff set.
> Dennis was wanting someone to tackle an html version.  Alas, my
> html is not so good.
> 
It shouldn't be that hard to make HTML directly from the roff source (I
could probably be persuaded to do something like this, given the roff
source first of course!)

Alan Bain

Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 15:35:45 +0100 (BST)
Message-Id: <199805081435.PAA20682@aiai.ed.ac.uk>
From: Tim Bradshaw < tfb@aiai.ed.ac.uk>
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To: "Robert D. Keys" < rdkeys@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
Cc: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey), pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
Subject: Re: First edition Unix manuals
In-Reply-To: <199805081328.JAA03767@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
References: <19980508083236.N12200@freebie.lemis.com>
	<199805081328.JAA03767@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
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* Robert D Keys wrote:

> I have the intro and first few manpages of section 1 done so far.
> Maybe a week or so and then if someone will proof them.  I will
> port them in original roff source, and then make a troff set.
> Dennis was wanting someone to tackle an html version.  Alas, my
> html is not so good.

I could probably manufacture HTML from roff reasonably rapidly,
assuming the originals are vaguely clean.  I used to do this for a
living at one piunt (:).

--tim

Subject: Re: First edition Unix manuals
In-Reply-To: < Pine.SOL.3.95q.980508150740.5409B-100000@red.csi.cam.ac.uk> from Alan Bain at "May 8, 98 03:08:38 pm"
To: afrb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk (Alan Bain)
Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 10:14:19 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
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> On Fri, 8 May 1998, Robert D. Keys wrote:
>>> On Thu,  7 May 1998 at  9:05:02 -0400, Robert D. Keys wrote:
>>>> I emailed him about the possibility of recreating the roff sources,
>>>> an I will probably wind up doing that.  Then we will have a working
>>>> set of sources for clean copy.
>>> 
>>> Great idea.  Keep us posted.
>>> 
>>> Greg
>> 
>> I have the intro and first few manpages of section 1 done so far.
>> Maybe a week or so and then if someone will proof them.  I will
>> port them in original roff source, and then make a troff set.
>> Dennis was wanting someone to tackle an html version.  Alas, my
>> html is not so good.
>> 
> It shouldn't be that hard to make HTML directly from the roff source (I
> could probably be persuaded to do something like this, given the roff
> source first of course!)

Or use programs written already to do that, like RosettaMan (at least
I still call it that, the author changed its name). Here's a blurb
from its announcement.

:: PolyglotMan (nee RosettaMan) is a filter for UNIX manual pages.  It
:: takes as input man pages for a variety of UNIX flavors and produces as
:: output a variety of file formats.  Currently PolyglotMan accepts man
:: pages from the following flavors of UNIX: Hewlett-Packard HP-UX, AT&T
:: System V, SunOS, Sun Solaris, OSF/1, DEC Ultrix, SGI IRIX, Linux, SCO,
:: FreeBSD; and produces output for the following formats: printable
:: ASCII only (stripping page headers and footers), section and
:: subsection headers only, TkMan, [tn]roff, RTF, SGML (soon--I finally
:: found a DTD), HTML, MIME, LaTeX, LaTeX 2e, Perl 5's pod.  Previously
:: PolyglotMan required pages to be formatted by nroff prior to
:: its processing; with version 3.0, it prefers [tn]roff source and
:: usually can produce results that are better yet.
:: 
:: PolyglotMan improves upon other man page filters in several ways: (1) its
:: analysis recognizes the structural pieces of man pages, enabling high
:: quality output, (2) its modular structure permits easy augmentation of
:: output formats, (3) it accepts man pages formatted with the variant
:: macros of many different flavors of UNIX, and (4) it doesn't require
:: modification of or cooperation with any other program.

:: The home location for PolyglotMan is ftp.cs.berkeley.edu:
:: /ucb/people/phelps/tcltk/rman.tar.Z (this is a softlink to the latest,
:: numbered version).  If you discover a bug and you obtained PolyglotMan
:: at some other site, first grab it from this one to see if the problem
:: has been fixed.

This is only for man pages, but probably could take the papers in ms
format and give a rough translation, or hack up polyglotman some to do
ms as well..

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From: Warren Toomey < wkt@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Message-Id: <199807130347.NAA07263@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Subject: Recovering old UNIX manuals
To: norman@nose.cs.yorku.ca
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:47:55 +1000 (EST)
Cc: pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (PDP Unix Preservation)
In-Reply-To: < WAA00038@lion.cs.yorku.ca> from "norman@nose.cs.yorku.ca" at "Jul 12, 98 10:20:04 pm"
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All,
	I'm forwarding on Norman's e-mail describing his efforts at
converting his paper-only copies of the early UNIX manuals back into
machine-readable format.

	Warren

norman@nose.cs.yorku.ca writes:
> The first pass of markup is all done on chapter I of 5e, which is
> all I have scanned so far.  It is tempting to forge ahead on the
> text extracted from Dennis's 1e, but I hope to discipline myself
> to finish some surrounding documentation and tools.  On each front,
> right now there is:
> 	- a small collection of tools to pre-process what comes out
> 	of the OCR into something that is easy to mark up.
> 	Specifically there are a couple of little filters that
> 	fix up the non-ASCII characters emitted by the Mac, and
> 	that glue hyphenated words back together; and a rather
> 	bigger awk script that does some of the easy grunt work
> 	like spotting and marking up entry titles and section headers.
> 	- a description of the markup language (written in itself,
> 	of course).
> 	- a program (also in awk, and surprisingly long) to render
> 	the markup language into approximately V7 -man.  (I have
> 	actually done all the work so far on the MicroVAX in my
> 	basement, which is one of the last remaining V10 systems
> 	in the world, and it won't surprise me to learn that the
> 	renderer has accidentally picked up some V10-specific
> 	assumptions.)
> 	- a collection of advice on style and known OCR botches
> 	and whatnot for those who mark up and proof the manuals
> 	as they go through the pipe.  (At the moment `those' means
> 	me and my collaborator in California.)
> 
> The most important missing tools and writings are something to render
> into HTML, and something that explains a little more generally just
> what it is I am doing (and how it differs from what Dennis did, and
> for that matter from just trying to regenerate the original troff
> input) and describes the tools and so on.  My current hope is to
> get those done in odd moments this week; once I have a decent
> approximation of each, I want to put copies of all the documents
> and all the tools and a few sample pages from 5e up on the web, so
> people have something to look at and I can get comments from a wider
> group.  (Obviously I'll drop a note to the PUPS mailing list when
> things are up there.)
> 
> While I'm writing the HTML renderer and the missing document this
> week, my colleague in California has already begun an independent
> proofreading pass over the stuff I've marked up, which is a damn
> good thing because I can't see the errors any more (and she has
> already spotted some).
> 
> The other tools I know are missing are
> - some sort of structure to allow the old pre-typesetter manuals
> to be rendered in a good approximation of their original form.
> At the moment I expect this will just be a troff macro package
> with the syntax of V7 -man, so I can just use the existing renderer,
> though I can see some font issues looming that may cause force the
> renderer to change (perhaps in a way general enough that there will
> still be only one renderer).
> - something to allow V6-era -man (or /usr/man/man0/naa, to name it
> properly) macros to work too; the obvious cheap way out is something
> that translates V7 -man to V6, presumably with the knowledge that what
> it is translating came out of my markto7man renderer (which restricts
> the language quite a bit, so the job is a lot simpler).  I'm not sure
> how important this is--the obvious short-term goal is to be able to
> have a man command in the V5 environment, and since the macros probably
> aren't in the existing distribution, it's fair game to bring in a copy
> of the V7 ones--but it seems worth having in the long run if only for
> fun.
> 
> I'd originally thought to write more of the tools before doing so
> much markup, but I'm glad I didn't--the markup language mutated more
> than I expected as experience showed where it was wrong, and it made
> life simpler to have only one renderer to update.  I think it is
> pretty much stable now, and in any case I am champing at the bit to
> be able to display things in HTML.
> 
> A final complication in all this: it is all but certain that I'll
> be resigning from York this week, effective in about a month, to
> jump back to a position at the University of Toronto (running
> computers for the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics).
> This is not a surprise to anyone concerned (including the folks here
> at York--the real reason for the move is that the eleven-mile commute
> to York is just too long for me), but it will certainly have both
> short- and long-term effects on the time I can spend on the manuals.
> The long-term effects may not be what you think, though: the scanner
> and OCR setup I've been using is located at CITA, so once I've settled
> in there (and especially once I get the tools sorted out well enough
> that it is effectively a pipeline), it should be pretty convenient
> to spend the odd hour scanning in a handful of pages.

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From: "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" < rdkeys@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
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Subject: Re: Recovering old UNIX manuals
In-Reply-To: <199807130347.NAA07263@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> from Warren Toomey at "Jul 13, 98 01:47:55 pm"
To: wkt@cs.adfa.oz.au
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:44:42 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: norman@nose.cs.yorku.ca, pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
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> All,
> 	I'm forwarding on Norman's e-mail describing his efforts at
> converting his paper-only copies of the early UNIX manuals back into
> machine-readable format.
> 
> 	Warren
> 
> norman@nose.cs.yorku.ca writes:
> > The first pass of markup is all done on chapter I of 5e, which is
> > all I have scanned so far.  It is tempting to forge ahead on the
> > text extracted from Dennis's 1e, but I hope to discipline myself
> > to finish some surrounding documentation and tools.  On each front,
> > right now there is:

On a similar bent, I have been working on roffing Dennis' V1 manuals,
using the earliest roff I could still find some sort of source to.
It is one that was popular in the early CP/M days, that also found
its way into dos and unix.  How true to the original it is, I dunno,
but it works.  They are about 2/3 done, maybe, but my time to get them
done is not as much as I would like.

What should I do with them once they are done?  I was thinking of just
sending the source/output back to Dennis, but if it is OK to put them in
in the PUPS archives, I can bounce them to Warren.

Thanks to Dennis Ritchie for making them available.

Bob Keys

p.s.  You know, with all this html thingie, whatever happened to just
      a real roff/nroff/troff output?  It is only ascii.  Why html?
      Just curious as to why/wherefore/etc.

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I hadn't expected Warren to forward my note directly to the list,
so perhaps I'd better fill in some of the missing content.

What I'm trying to do with the old manuals is a mix of different
sorts of historic preservation: it's interesting to be able to
produce something reasonably close to the original in appearance,
including style differences, but I am also interested just in
making the content accessible.  That means being able to render
the manual pages into troff -man on modern UNIX systems, or into
nroff /man/man0/naa in the V5 root image, and roff and whatnot;
but also into HTML because that's the right way to make text
available on the web (Postscript is not text), and certainly into
other forms I haven't thought of yet.

To describe it all in utterly pragmatic terms, I want to be able
to put all the old manuals up on the web somewhere in readable
text form (not just page images or Postscript); and to produce
manual data of authentic content and reasonably authentic style
for use with the V5 binary distribution; and to be able to to
print clear reference copies for myself, so I can pack my old
photocopies away in a safe place; and to amuse myself by running
style and diction on the different editions; and I want to be
able to do that even if I don't have a copy of roff or the
appropriate age-authentic macro package.

So the idea is to mark up the text in a sufficiently high-level
form that it can be rendered into any of the forms above (including
the ones I haven't thought of) without undo work.  I thought briefly
about using the (V7-era) -man macros as the high-level language,
and in fact much of the simple language I ended up inventing are
obviously drawn from -man (e.g. there are constructs that are
exactly .TH, .SH, and .SS spelled differently); but I wanted to
avoid the temptation just to toss in more and more troff-specific
syntax and semantics whenever some hard-to-represent construct
popped up.  (There are too many low-level constructs in the resulting
language as it is.)  I also thought about using some existing
document metalanguage like XML or YODL, but those I looked at
were far more ornate than seemed appropriate, and far too free-form;
I don't mind carrying a few medium-sized awk programs around to
render the text, but I object to having to port a language-processing
subsystem larger than the V5 kernel just so I can render V5's manual
pages.  (Never mind how large awk and troff are these days.)

There's a name I should also name here: my collaborator in California
to whom the earlier message alludes is Jennine Townsend, who has
photocopies of my photocopies from a sort of earlier collaboration.

More on this in a few days; as I said to Warren, I hope to get
a coherent sample of all this work up on the web shortly so people
can see what I'm doing in more detail and comment, but I am in
the midst of deciding whether to change jobs (it is a coincidence
that the likely job change would put me nearer the OCR setup I've
been using, but it is convenient), and in getting back into the
swing of things at my present job after being out for two weeks
to recover from having corrective maintenance on my sinuses, so
it may not happen till the weekend.

Norman Wilson

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A postscript to my note on the old manuyals (typed into the
editor but not written out before I sent the mail!):

A note on distributing this stuff: I asked Dennis about it before
I started my project, and he thought there should be no real
problem making the text generally available, but that it would
be appropriate for the official repository to be at Bell Labs
(now a once-again-visible subsidiary of Lucent Technologies).
That seems pretty sensible to me.  I doubt there's a problem
putting them in the PUPS archive, but it would be politic to
check with Dennis first.