3 ms·

Somehow I had never heard of/seen this before. It looks like a prog rock album cover or something. Some old commands in there I haven't used in a long time (po

Somehow I had never heard of/seen this before. It looks like a prog rock album cover or something. Some old commands in there I haven't used in a long time (poke, uucp), or never used - I think the troff I know is actually the one in GWBASIC (tracing off).

jibal 2y ago
Much of the acceptance of UNIX at Bell Labs was due to its role as a typesetting system, with troff, eqn, and tbl commands. I worked for a UNIX support company (Interactive Systems Corporation) and our first customer was the U.S. Supreme Court because they deal with so many documents.
- PopAlongKid 2y ago
  When I first started using Unix in school in the early 1980s, at least a third of the time was using nroff/troff, tbl and eqn. Maybe another 20% playing rogue. The rest was used to become a vi/ex advanced user, writing csh and awk scripts, and learning C. The article mentions the "t" in troff, but doesn't mention that "roff" was short for "run off". I forget what the "n" was for.
  - abetusk 2y ago
    "New" roff [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nroff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nroff
DonHopkins 2y ago
The TRS-80 has TROFF and TRON! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQoL_qpYbW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQoL_qpYbW0 More useful but not quite as magical as DECSYSTEM 10 and DECSYSTEM 20 BASIC's "LISTREVERSE" command! https://web.archive.org/web/20210713130832/https://imgur.com/a/Bt40M https://web.archive.org/web/20210713130832/https://imgur.com... Chalk one up for DEC and BASIC. What other programming languages support that feature, huh? Now all you need is a COMEFROM and COMESUB and RUNREVERSE (or NUR) statements, and you can write reversible BASIC programs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World DECSYSTEM 20 BASIC User's Guide: LISTREVERSE command LISTREVERSE LISTNHREVERSE LISTREVERSE and LISTNHREVERSE print the contents of the user's memory area in order of descending line numbers. LISTREVERSE precedes the output with a heading, LISTNHREVERSE eliminates the heading. LISTREVERSE EQUIV 10:53 13-NOV-75 40 END 35 PRINT "THE EQUIVALENT CURRENT IS",I, " AMPERES" 25 I=E1/R 10 INPUT R 5 INPUT E1 READY http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-10-XBRCA-A-D%20DECsystem10%20Basic%20Language%20Reference%20Card%20(Version%2017B).pdf http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-1... http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-20-LBMAA-A-D%20BASIC%20User's%20Guide.pdf http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-2... Emacs should have an edit-reverse-mode!
- Gibbon1 2y ago
  I liked Rocky Mountain BASIC with it's nice string operations and first class matrix operations. I think it had a sort function too. But can't remember.

jibal 2y ago

Much of the acceptance of UNIX at Bell Labs was due to its role as a typesetting system, with troff, eqn, and tbl commands. I worked for a UNIX support company (Interactive Systems Corporation) and our first customer was the U.S. Supreme Court because they deal with so many documents.

PopAlongKid 2y ago
When I first started using Unix in school in the early 1980s, at least a third of the time was using nroff/troff, tbl and eqn. Maybe another 20% playing rogue. The rest was used to become a vi/ex advanced user, writing csh and awk scripts, and learning C. The article mentions the "t" in troff, but doesn't mention that "roff" was short for "run off". I forget what the "n" was for.
- abetusk 2y ago
  "New" roff [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nroff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nroff

DonHopkins 2y ago

The TRS-80 has TROFF and TRON! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQoL_qpYbW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQoL_qpYbW0 More useful but not quite as magical as DECSYSTEM 10 and DECSYSTEM 20 BASIC's "LISTREVERSE" command! https://web.archive.org/web/20210713130832/https://imgur.com/a/Bt40M https://web.archive.org/web/20210713130832/https://imgur.com... Chalk one up for DEC and BASIC. What other programming languages support that feature, huh? Now all you need is a COMEFROM and COMESUB and RUNREVERSE (or NUR) statements, and you can write reversible BASIC programs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World DECSYSTEM 20 BASIC User's Guide: LISTREVERSE command LISTREVERSE LISTNHREVERSE LISTREVERSE and LISTNHREVERSE print the contents of the user's memory area in order of descending line numbers. LISTREVERSE precedes the output with a heading, LISTNHREVERSE eliminates the heading. LISTREVERSE EQUIV 10:53 13-NOV-75 40 END 35 PRINT "THE EQUIVALENT CURRENT IS",I, " AMPERES" 25 I=E1/R 10 INPUT R 5 INPUT E1 READY http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-10-XBRCA-A-D%20DECsystem10%20Basic%20Language%20Reference%20Card%20(Version%2017B).pdf http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-1... http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-20-LBMAA-A-D%20BASIC%20User's%20Guide.pdf http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-2... Emacs should have an edit-reverse-mode!

Gibbon1 2y ago
I liked Rocky Mountain BASIC with it's nice string operations and first class matrix operations. I think it had a sort function too. But can't remember.