Ingo Schwarze <schwa...@usta.de> wrote:
>>> 2. The concept of encoding names and versions of all operating >>> systems is not sustainable in the long run. > >> This was probably a product of its times; there was BSD, only one BSD, >> and then there was System V, and the importance of that conflict caused >> people to adopt a kind of tunnel vision. > > Maybe. Then again, we are talking about 1989. By that time, the > following systems already existed, just as some examples: > > - SVR1 (1983) > - SunOS 1.0 (1983) > - HP-UX 1.0 (1984) > - Ultrix-32 (1984) > - V9 AT&T UNIX (1986) > - AIX 1 (1986) > - MINIX 1.0 (1987) > - IRIX 3.0 (1988) > - SVR4 (1988) > - SunOS 4.0 (1988) Heh, Idris croaked the year prior (1979-1988). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idris_(operating_system) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idris_(operating_system)> First Unix-like system I dealt with. It had a formatter more akin to roff than troff (or even nroff), with no macro facility. Instead, it used hard-coded requests to mimic higher level man/ms constructs. I learned C mainly to extend it; I was working on adding macros when we moved to a Sun1 system. (In retrospect, I should have used m4, I think it was available on Idris.) >> Does Cynthia ever pop up to reflect on mdoc's design? > > Not really. With the help of Marshall Kirk McKusick, i managed to > get into direct contact with her in 2014 … > > One thing she did say that people may like round here is this: > > "What made the macro package possible was groff. > I regret having had to make the work backward compatible > with ditroff. Not my decision. > Would have loved to have rewritten the macros solely for groff. > The package would have been smaller, simpler and efficient > (faster, much faster.)" Given that ditroff was revived with Plan 9 (and extended with Heirloom and Neatroff), maybe that wasn’t a bad thing in the long run. :-D > [ ... snip all the points we agree on … Given how you two usually carry on, I was amazed by the amount of agreement! LOLrunawaycackling — Larry
