At 2025-05-02T15:06:46+0200, Martin Lemaire wrote: > Thank you Branden for those historical insights. > Off-topic to Alejandro's initial question but related to the subject of > justifying text set in monospace, do we owe this typographic gesture to > the early *roff formaters or was it already a thing in previous > publication tool, either software or hardware ?
It dates back at least to "old" roff, which is one of the first Unix
programs ever to exist. It is older than the C language.
roff(7):
History
Computer‐driven document formatting dates back to the 1960s. The
roff system is intimately connected with Unix, but its origins lie
with the earlier operating systems CTSS, GECOS, and Multics.
...
Unix and roff
McIlroy’s roff was one of the first Unix programs. In Ritchie’s
term, it was “transliterated” from BCPL to DEC PDP‐7 assembly
language for the fledgling Unix operating system. Automatic
hyphenation was managed with .hc and .hy requests, line spacing
control was generalized with the .ls request, and what later roffs
would call diversions were available via “footnote” requests. This
roff indirectly funded operating systems research at Murray Hill;
AT&T prepared patent applications to the U.S. government with it.
This arrangement enabled the group to acquire a PDP‐11; roff
promptly proved equal to the task of formatting the manual for what
would become known as “First Edition Unix”, dated November 1971.
And, sure enough, it performed adjustment. We can observe its behavior
in Seventh Edition Unix (1979), which while much later chronologically,
also documents roff(1) as "utterly frozen". Joe Ossanna's nroff(1),
"new roff", appeared in Second Edition Unix (1972) and immediately
sucked up all the oxygen available for document formatting work at the
Bell Labs CSRC.
---snip---
PDP-11 simulator V3.8-1
Disabling XQ
@boot
New Boot, known devices are hp ht rk rl rp tm vt
: rl(0,0)rl2unix
mem = 177856
# Restricted rights: Use, duplication, or disclosure
is subject to restrictions stated in your contract with
Western Electric Company, Inc.
Thu Sep 22 23:33:03 EDT 1988
login: dmr
$ cat lemaire
Off-topic to Alejandro's initial question but related to the subject of
justifying text set in monospace, do we owe this typographic gesture to
the early *roff formaters or was it already a thing in previous
publication tool, either software or hardware?
$ roff lemaire | sed '/^$/d'
Off-topic to Alejandro's initial question but related to the sub-
ject of justifying text set in monospace, do we owe this typogra-
phic gesture to the early *roff formaters or was it already a
thing in previous publication tool, either software or hardware?
---end snip---
> Are you aware of theory or paper on the subject ?
The practice of adjusting lines of text to be all the same length when
typesetting is an old one. It appears to be the practice in at least
some late-medieval illuminated manuscripts, and images of the pages of
the Gutenberg Bible that I can find online suggest to me that the
practice goes back to the dawn of the printing press.
Since monospaced typefaces are a straightforward application of movable
type, the concept of "adjusting" printed lines thereof could not have
been novel. It was simply too tedious a practice to expect of
typewriter operators who composed text on the fly while drafting.
Computers, however, are perfect for automation of tedium.
But I'm far from a subject matter expert. And a bit too young to opine
authoritatively on life at the CSRC. Fortunately, some groff list
subscribers have first-hand knowledge. :)
Regards,
Branden
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