I once managed to compile and run the source code to gremlin, the graphic frontend for producing grn files. But it was quite primitive, and kind of useless, so I didn't keep it.
Robert Goulding Sent from my Google Pixel 4 On Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 9:53 AM Ingo Schwarze <schwa...@usta.de> wrote: > Hi Wim, > > Wim Stockman wrote on Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 10:48:15PM +0200: > > > Hi , I was looking into the groff doc dir and found this old file format. > > the Gremlin file format for graphics. > > But even on google I cannot find a lot of information about it. > > Does someone have some info on it ,some documentation perhaps > > I'd like to take a look at this ancient format out of curiosity. > > https://manpages.debian.org/buster/groff/grn.1.en.html > https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/src/preproc/grn/README > https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/src/preproc/grn/grn.1.man > > The oldest document using it i managed to find was the manual of > "The SPMS Software Project Management System" by Peter J. Nicklin, > published together with 4.2BSD in September 1983, written in ms(7) > macros with 13 "gremlinfile" drawings. > > It seems SPMS was a rather short-lived animal. Neither 4.3BSD > nor 4.4BSD included it. 4.3BSD-Tahoe and 4.3BSD-Reno appear to > include a radically abridged version of the manual - about > one tenth of the original size - but neither the program code > nor the gremlinfile drawings. > > Either way, all this predates most of the history documented by > > https://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg/ > > which consists of > > 2% 4.0BSD development history > 3% 4.1BSD development history > 15% 4.2BSD development history > 50% 4.3BSD development history > 30% 4.4BSD development history > > Files were only gradually added to the SCCS, so in particular for the > earlier of these releases, some files that were part of releases were > not in the SCCS. In particular, SPMS never was. I only found it, > and its gremlinfile drawings, on Marshall McKusick's archive CDs: > > https://www.mckusick.com/csrg/ > > The SCCS includes this though: > > https://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg/lib/libplot/grn/ > > But this online version of the CSRG SCCS at svnweb.freebsd.org is > really very, very buggy. The following files were contained in > the orignal SCCS tree but are missing from svnweb.freebsd.org: > > * a grn(1) manual page written by David Slattengren > * a gremlin(1) manual page written by Barry Roitblat > * a gremlinlib(1) manual page written by Mark Opperman > * some simple gremlin drawing contained in the following handbook: > "Wisconsin ARGO 1.0 Kernel Programmer's Guide for > Academic Operating Systems 4.3 > This document describes the design and implementation of the ISO > transport and network layers written for the ACIS Operating System, > the IBM ACIS port of Berkeley 4.3 Unix" (1988) > (I didn't find the author of that document...) > * three "gremlinfile" drawings contained in the following document: > "An Introductory 4.4BSD Interprocess Communication Tutorial" > by Stuart Sechrest, Computer Science Research Group, UCB (1986) > > All in all, it appears gremlin was used sparingly even back in the > day, to put it mildly. It originated in BSD, but what is listed > above is all use of it that i managed to find so far, even after > systemetically searching the complete BSD history from 1BSD to > 4.4BSD-Lite2. That is, i only see evidence for less than three > dozen drawings in three pieces of rather obscure documentation, > grand total. > > A printed book i consulted, "Document Formatting and Typesetting > on the UNIX System" by Narain Gehani and Steven Lally (of AT&T) > published in 1987/88 does not even mention gremlin, whereas it > contains long chapters on pic and grap and briefly mentions ideal. > > Yours, > Ingo > >
