From uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!agate!darkstar.UCSC.EDU!cats.ucsc.edu!haynes Tue Jan 12 16:15:31 CST 1993 Article: 33188 of alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!agate!darkstar.UCSC.EDU!cats.ucsc.edu!haynes From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: HISTORY OF WORD PROCESSIN Date: 12 Jan 1993 19:18:58 GMT Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz Lines: 51 Distribution: world Message-ID: <1iv5j2INNc4t@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> References: <4174676634.23@inode.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: hobbes.ucsc.edu Status: R Well I know we were doing word processing experimentally at General Electric in Phoenix in the 1966-68 time frame. This ran on a Datanet 30 processor and used IBM 1050 and 2741 terminals. I don't remember now the name of the guy who was developing it. I remember it had some connection with Calvin Mooers' TRAC language; but I'm not sure if the word processor was written in TRAC. Now in the 1963-1966 time frame I was working at Teletype. We didn't have an upper/lower case terminal in production at the time, but were working on the Model 37 and 38 (which eventually came to market too late to be interesting). I believe people at Bell Labs were interested in word processing at the time, in connection with Multics. Even tho we didn't have up/low terminals there was some diddling with upper-case-only word processing on things such as the Dartmouth Time Sharing System and probably at MIT on CTSS, the predecessor of Multics. Note too, from the Thompson and Ritchie papers, that the first use of Unix aside from the developers was a word-processing system for patent applications. This suggests that the writing of nroff and troff and their predecessor roff was going on at least in the early history of Unix, and probably back in Multics days. I'm also aware of some upper-case-only work done at Burroughs - again I forget the person's name but the software ran on B5500s and was used to produce things like the software release notes. Now if you want to get really ancient - this hardly qualifies as word processing in the modern sense, but the Linotype is word processing in the sense that the operator evens the margins and that sort of thing as the type is being set. And there was the Teletypesetter version of that, where the operator did his/her thing on a paper tape punch and then the tape could be transmitted by wire to produce a tape to run the Linotype. Teletype did produce an up/low printer for use in connection with this; but it printed ragged margins since it didn't have variable- width spacing. It was used simply to view what was on the punched tape. You could try to learn something about the Friden Flexowriter, the up/low machine based on the IBM electric typewriter mechanism and using paper tape. These were used with some very early computers, not for word processing but for I/O; but perhaps somebody wrote a word processing program to take advantage of it. Then there's the Varityper - I don't know what one is, but I have this vague memory of hearing about something with variable-pitch typing and maybe a paper tape that you run through it twice to get even margins. -- haynes@cats.ucsc.edu haynes@cats.bitnet "Ya can talk all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was!" "No it aint! But ya gotta know the territory!" Meredith Willson: "The Music Man" From uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!news.uiowa.edu!news Tue Jan 12 19:05:26 CST 1993 Article: 33190 of alt.folklore.computers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!news.uiowa.edu!news From: jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) Subject: Re: HISTORY OF WORD PROCESSIN Sender: news@news.uiowa.edu (News) Message-ID: <1993Jan12.215813.26609@news.uiowa.edu> Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 21:58:13 GMT References: <1iv5j2INNc4t@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> Nntp-Posting-Host: pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Lines: 27 Status: R >From article <1iv5j2INNc4t@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>, by haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes): > ... Note too, from the Thompson > and Ritchie papers, that the first use of Unix aside from the developers > was a word-processing system for patent applications. This suggests that > the writing of nroff and troff and their predecessor roff was going on > at least in the early history of Unix, and probably back in Multics days. I happen to have a copy of the Murray Hill Computing Honeywell GCOS Roff Text Formatter manual, dated October 1972. M. D. McIlroy wrote ROFF for the GE 600/H 6000 under G[E]COS, with a 1971 release date. This is based on Saltzer's RUNOFF, with the citation pointing to the CTSS book edited by Crisman and published by MIT Press in 1965. When I was at Bell Labs in 1973, UNIX had become a "word processing system" fairly recently. Prior to this, UNIX was developed without official sanction from the management of the labs (all technical staff members were allowed 20% of their time for personal projects, so this wasn't unusual). By having the labs support UNIX officially as a word processing system, Kernighan and Ritchie and Thompson and McIlroy were able to devote more of their time to UNIX than the 20% they would otherwise have been allowed. I should say that when I was at Bell Labs in '73 and '74, I knew UNIX users, but I used GCOS and spent my time working on a command language interpreter (shell) for a different system, a cluster of 3 workstations based and a file server, based on DDP 516 minicomputers and a slotted ring LAN. From uchinews!msuinfo!caen!uunet!seas.gwu.edu!dutcher Fri Jan 15 10:02:40 CST 1993 Article: 33265 of alt.folklore.computers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!msuinfo!caen!uunet!seas.gwu.edu!dutcher From: dutcher@seas.gwu.edu (Sylvia Dutcher) Subject: Re: HISTORY OF WORD PROCESSIN Message-ID: <1993Jan14.142341.10556@seas.gwu.edu> Sender: news@seas.gwu.edu Organization: George Washington University References: <4174676634.23@inode.com> <1iv5j2INNc4t@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 14:23:41 GMT Lines: 28 Status: R In article <1iv5j2INNc4t@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes) writes: > >Now in the 1963-1966 time frame I was working at Teletype. We didn't have >an upper/lower case terminal in production at the time, but were working >on the Model 37 and 38 (which eventually came to market too late to be >interesting). I believe people at Bell Labs were interested in word >processing at the time, in connection with Multics. Even tho we didn't >have up/low terminals there was some diddling with upper-case-only word >processing on things such as the Dartmouth Time Sharing System and probably >at MIT on CTSS, the predecessor of Multics. I have in front of me a RUNOFF manual from CTSS. The system, which ran on an IBM 7094, used IBM selectric terminals. The early ones were gray- blue squarish boxes, the later cream colored aerodynamically-styled. Both hand changeable typeballs supporting upper and lower case. At M.I.T. at that time there were also a few video displays, including a green scope with a character generator and storage scope. You'd display a page on it, edit it, then there'd be a bright flash of light while the display erased. The trick was to find the terminal unattended, log in on your CTSS account, edit the document (say, a term paper) on the video tube, then print it out using RUNOFF on one of the spiffy IBM printers. Of course one should mention TECO (Tape Editor and Corrector) that (I think) Peter Sampson modified to run on the PDP-1 video display and Sampson and others ported to the PDP-6. By word processors, I'm assuming the questor meant systems using video terminals. Text manipulation systems go much further back. Turing described one... . From uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!ames!taligent!tvv.taligent.com!user Fri Jan 6 13:48:51 CST 1995 Article: 86331 of alt.folklore.computers Xref: uchinews alt.folklore.computers:86331 alt.os.multics:1713 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.os.multics Path: uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!ames!taligent!tvv.taligent.com!user From: tom_van_vleck@taligent.com (Tom Van Vleck) Subject: old mainframes & text processing Message-ID: Sender: usenet@taligent.com (More Bytes Than You Can Read) Organization: Multicians References: <3ea02v$3nk@nexus.uiowa.edu> Date: Tue, 3 Jan 1995 18:56:39 GMT Lines: 41 Status: R Douglas W. Jones wrote: >Script was cloned as RUNOFF by the folks at MIT. The MULTICS version >begat GECOS ROFF, for which I have a manual. GECOS ROFF was >improved on to make UNIX NROFF and TROFF (New ROFF and Typeset ROFF?). > >Script and TROFF both litter your documents with control lines that >begin with . (period), so the family relationship is pretty obvious. > >What I don't know is whether Script is descended in any way from >Expensive Typewriter, a wonderful hack at MIT and perhaps the first >computerized text formatter. The correct lineage is: PDP-1 Expensive Typewriter (Peter Sampson) about 1962 CTSS RUNOFF (Jerry Saltzer) 1964-65 CMS SCRIPT (Stuart E. Madnick) 1967 CTSS BCPL runoff (Rudd Canaday, Dennis Ritchie) 1967-68 Multics BCPL runoff (Canaday, Ritchie, Ossanna) 1968 UNIX troff (J. F. Ossanna) dunno Saltzer wrote RUNOFF in order to format his MIT PhD thesis, which was about the design of the Multics process scheduler. Saltzer credited Expensive Typewriter as the inspiration. (There was another text processing facility on CTSS, far inferior: the MEMO, MODIFY, and DITTO commands.) Madnick was an undergraduate in the late 60s, worked summers at IBM Cambridge Scientific Center, demon programmer, extremely creative. (He designed the CMS file system in the summer of 1966.) Madnick's SCRIPT was derived from RUNOFF, again as a personal tool to format papers for his courses. (Melinda Varian's "VM and the VM Community" says that Stu started with a program by Dick Bayles that was very closely modeled on CTSS RUNOFF.) When I used it in 1968 or so, SCRIPT had fewer commands than RUNOFF and was generally more primitive. In those days IBM didn't like to have the programmer's name in the code anywhere, but Madnick called his code the Script Environment Module, and SEM would come out whenever you ran it. (Varian says "even today, Madnick's name appears in the source for Waterloo Script.") From uchinews!iitmax!chicagokent.kentlaw.edu!news.ecn.bgu.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!uknet!lsl!paul Sat Jan 28 03:45:07 CST 1995 Article: 88363 of alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!iitmax!chicagokent.kentlaw.edu!news.ecn.bgu.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!uknet!lsl!paul From: paul@lsl.co.uk (Paul Hardy) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: old mainframes & text processing Message-ID: <1995Jan24.175401.5181@lsl> Date: 24 Jan 95 17:54:00 +0000 References: <3eqch5$d9l@nexus.uiowa.edu> Distribution: world Organization: Laser-Scan Ltd., Cambridge Lines: 102 Status: R In article <3eqch5$d9l@nexus.uiowa.edu>, jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes: > ... > How many others out there have had to write software (text editors, > formatters, or other supporting stuff) so they could edit or print their > thesis? > Doug Jones > jones@cs.uiowa.edu In 1974 at Cambridge (the real one not the US clone :^) ) a pair of us doing Computer Science knocked up a formatter from first principles in about three nights for doing our project reports. We were both called Paul (hello Paul McClellan - are you out there ?) so the program was called PPPP (Paul's Pretty Pagination Program). It ran on the university's IBM 370/176, and later on a Modular 1 minicomputer. Input was from punched cards (all upper case!), and output to a band printer. I'm not particularly proud of its style now, but it did its job. What's more it still works! I took it with me when I joined Laser-Scan in 1975 and ported it to PDP-11 under DOS, then RSX, and in 1979 onto VAX. We used it for preparing documentation for early Laser-Scan mapping software, before switching to RUNOFF (and later to LaTeX and WordPerfect). It says something for DEC binary upwards compatability that that same image compiled in December 1979 on a VAX-11/780 under VMS V1, still runs on a MicroVAX 3100 today under VMS 6.1 ! I had reason to want a printout of one of the manuals from 1979, and ran it recently. Here is a directory listing and some evidence! Directory LSL$USER_ROOT:[PAUL.TOOLS.PPP] IPRALG.PPP;1 7/12 21-SEP-1979 12:16:36.22 PPP.EXE;8 21/24 14-DEC-1979 12:29:41.97 PPP.FOR;11 32/36 14-DEC-1979 12:27:05.29 PPP.PPP;2 7/12 15-APR-1986 13:22:11.93 $ TYPE IPRALG.PPP $M10 5 5 $HIFF ALGORITHMS $SBACKGROUND $L$PTHE PROGRAM \I\F\F PROCESSES \INTERNAL \FEATURE \FORMAT FILES. ITS PRIME PURPOSE IS TO APPLY THE RESULTS OF CALIBRATION OF THE DIGITISER TO RAW MEASUREMENTS, AND TO ALIGN THESE MEASUREMENTS TO THE KNOWN CORNER POINT POSITIONS. IN ADDITION, CLIPPING TO BOUNDARIES AND CHANGING OF CO-ORDINATE SYSTEMS CAN BE PERFORMED. ... $ TYPE PPP.FOR C. PAUL'S PRETTY PAGINATION PROGRAM. C. PAUL MCCLELLAN ASSISTED BY PAUL HARDY FEBRUARY TO DECEMBER 1975. C. WRITTEN IN STANDARD FORTRAN IV EXCEPT FOR QUOTE (') HOLLERITHS C. ALSO IMPLEMENTATION DEPENDENT FILE HANDLING AND DATE ROUTINES. C. READS FROM UNIT 1 AND WRITES TO UNIT 2. C. INTERACTIVE INPUT AND OUTPUT FOR FILE TITLE VIA UNITS 5 & 6 C C / Last Edited 14 DECEMBER 1979 C CALL INIT CALL PAGIN CALL TIDY END C SUBROUTINE RCH(CH) LOGICAL SNTNCE,LOWING,SAVLOW,JSTING,COPYNG,ENDING LOGICAL SAVSEN INTEGER FSTOP INTEGER B(150),KODE(15),CH,ISP,BSLASH,DOLLAR,PRES,UFL,EOB,OCH,PTR COMMON/SWITCH/SNTNCE,LOWING,SAVLOW,JSTING,COPYNG,ENDING COMMON/RCHC/UFL,PRES,EOB,B,OCH,PTR DATA KODE/'E','M','N','P','C','H','S','F','B','T','L','U','J','D', & 'I'/ DATA ISP,BSLASH,DOLLAR,IQQQ,INJSP,FSTOP/' ','\','$','?','{','.'/ C SAVSEN = SNTNCE IF (UFL.EQ.1) GO TO 110 ... $ RUN PPP PPPP V6 on 24-JAN-95 File Title ? IPRALG $ TYPE PPPOUT.TMP IFF ALGORITHMS -------------- BACKGROUND ---------- The program IFF processes Internal Feature Format files. Its prime purpose is to apply the results of calibration of the digitiser to raw measurements, and to align these measurements to the known corner point positions. In addition, clipping to boundaries and changing of co-ordinate systems can be performed. ... There probably aren't that many executable programs around which have been continuously on-line on non-removeable disk since 1979 and still work today (but that might start another thread)! -- Paul Hardy (PGH), Chief Programmer, Laser-Scan Ltd, Science Park, Milton Rd, CAMBRIDGE, CB4 4FY, England. Tel: (+44) (0)1223 420414; Fax: 420044, Email: PAUL@LSL.CO.UK (via BRITAIN.EU.NET). Good judgement is the result of experience ... ... Experience is the result of bad judgement. (Fred Brooks) From uchinews!linac!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!world!dpbsmith Sat Jan 23 12:07:46 CST 1993 Article: 33516 of alt.folklore.computers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!linac!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!world!dpbsmith From: dpbsmith@world.std.com (Daniel P. B. Smith) Subject: First word processor was Pete Samson's TJ-1, c 1964. Message-ID: Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 15:31:00 GMT Lines: 80 Status: R Well, actually I'm not too sure about any of this but I figure I'll babble what I THINK I know and let the truth emerge in flaming follow-ups. The TX-0 at MIT used a Friden Flexowriter as console terminal, tape reader, and punch. The PDP-1 used modified IBM electric typewriters, and Friden Flexowriters were used as offline tape preparation devices. This meant that the overall computing environment included letter-quality devices with upper and lower case. It also meant that the medium (paper tape) encouraged software designs that thought of I/O in terms of byte streams rather than fixed-length records. The Flexowriter, in itself, was an electric typewriter that could read and punch tape. The "stop code" provided for primitive personalization. Dear stopcode. Your account is now in arrears by stopcode. etc. In a very primitive sense the Flexowriter itself was a word processor. I believe the Justowriter was also a Friden product. The IBM Executive Typewriter provided limited proportional spacing. The TERM "word processing" was invented by IBM, circa 1975 I think, as a marketing thing, and originally included just plain typewriters. Well, I digress. Anyway, a piece of software called TJ-2 (TJ for Type Justifier) was in declining use (i.e. its peak was EARLIER) circa 1964 or so at MIT. I believe it was used to print the Tech Model Railroader's newsletter. It was a primitive, but recognizable RUNOFF-like system (no attempt at WYSIWYG editing; separate editor/formatter). It didn't use dot commands; I believe the nonspacing overbar was used to mark commands, a common convention for PDP-1 software. I believe there were about ten commands. You definitely could center lines, justify them, word wrap them, and there was definitely two-column capability. You could leave space to insert pictures. There was also an incredibly impressive (to me) hyphenation feature. Whenever it needed to hyphenate a word it would display it on a CRT and you'd point the light pen at the hyphenation points. This was the first thing _I_ saw that resembled a word processor, and it surely antedated the UNIX tools. Whether _it_ was influenced by typesetting stuff I wouldn't know. I'm PRETTY sure that Digital got into typesetting and had a package called TYPSET/RUNOFF or something of the sort, TYPSET being the "real" typesetter and RUNOFF intended to be the rough-proof-on-fixed-pitch-printer tool. I think these antedated and influenced the UNIX tools, i.e. I think the name TROFF is derived from the then-popular RUNOFF. While I'm babbling. Contrary to a recent item in ComputerWorld, "Expensive Typewriter" did NOT just make the PDP-1 into a typewriter. It was a text editor vaguely similar in capabilities to EDLIN. The name was just because of general horror at the whole idea of using expensive processor cycles, even PDP-1 processor cycles, for something as mundane as text editing. The original (highly flawed!) idea behind TECO, which stands for Tape Editor and Corrector, was to replace (yuck) on-line interactive editing with efficient offline editing. You'd prepare a "correction tape" offline and feed it in along with the original, and punch a corrected copy. In other words, the idea behind TECO was to replace interactive editing with BATCH PROCESSING! The fancy features in TECO were intended to provide a rich enough feature set to make this possible. I personally never met any human being skilled enough with TECO to use it that way. It was always used on-line. (I DID, occasionally, see people making corrections by SPLICING PAPER TAPE. But I never saw anyone making a TECO correction tape). Another cultural issue was that text editors were slow to arise in the IBM world because you could insert and delete physical cards from card decks. I can't prove it, but I believe these historical features (paper tape, letter-quality upper/lowercase typewriters) influenced the way Digital designed products, which in turn influenced some of the thinking of the designers of UNIX. Anyway, the first word processor _I_ ever used was Expensive Typewriter or TECO as the editor, followed by TJ-2 as the formatter. I still have a writeup on TJ-2 somewhere and when I find it I'll post more. -- Daniel P. B. Smith dpbsmith@world.std.com From uchinews!linac!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!haven.umd.edu!uunet!world!dpbsmith Sun Jan 24 11:57:13 CST 1993 Article: 33529 of alt.folklore.computers Xref: uchinews alt.folklore.computers:33529 comp.lang.misc:7903 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.lang.misc Path: uchinews!linac!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!haven.umd.edu!uunet!world!dpbsmith From: dpbsmith@world.std.com (Daniel P. B. Smith) Subject: 1963 memo describing TJ-2 word processor (7 pp. total) Message-ID: Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA References: <1993Jan21.164142.27673@osf.org> <1993Jan24.013913.23262@midway.uchicago.edu> Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 04:36:05 GMT Lines: 355 Status: R TJ-2: The First Word Processor? Because I think TJ-2 has a reasonable claim to be the first word processor, or, at any rate, a very early one, the memo describing it may have some historic interest and is reproduced here in its entirety. This is keyed in by hand but is intended to be an accurate copy of the original. I have tried to reproduce the original format precisely, including the exact places where spaces were inserted for justification. Numbers in brackets in the right margin refer my own notes, which follow. -------------------------------------------------------------------- PDP-1 COMPUTER [1] MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CAMBRIDGE 39, MASSACHUSETTS [2] PDP-9-1 TJ-2 TYPE JUSTIFYING PROGRAM [3] May 9, 1963 TJ-2 accepts English text from typewriter or reader, [4] and reproduces it at any line length via typewriter and/or punch. So much as possible both left and right margins are [5] aligned in the output. To accomplish this the program doubles some of the spaces in the output line, and may hyphenate words, getting hyphenation data from its diction- ary or from the operator via the display. Normal Mode: All hyphens in the input text are assumed [6] to mark compound words, and will be reproduced in the output. Carriage return is treated as a space, except: (a) [7] a string of carriage returns is ignored immediately follow- ing a hyphen; (b) non-ignored carriage returns are translat- ed into the same number of carriage returns if they immediately precede a tab. Any number of adjacent spaces is treated as a single space. Backspace and the unused Concise [8] codes are illegal. The program simulates tabs by spacing to the nearest imagined tab stop, as determined from the Test [9] Word. Quote Mode: The justification process may be sup- pressed for a portion of the input by the appearance of "^q" [10] (overbar-q) which puts TJ-2 into the Quote Mode. Subsequent characters from the input are copied exactly into the output [11] until the occurrence of "^e". It is wise to have carriage [12] returns as the first and last characters in the quoted material. All 100 octal Concise codes are legal in the Quote Mode, but overbar should be used with great caution because it is a signal for some special action by the program. Centering Mode: At the appearance of "^c" the text up to the next carriage return is centered on a separate line in the output. Should quoted material appear in the text to be centered, it is reproduced in the output but is not counted for the centering process. Figure Mode: The sequence overbar, f, a decimal number, overbar, is taken by TJ-2 as a command to leave blank lines for a figure in the output. The number given, minus one, blank lines are inserted in the output immediate- ly if there is room on the current output page, otherwise the space is left at the beginning of the next page. If the "f" is omitted, the space is always left immediately. Inverted Indenting Mode: This mode is entered by the occurrence of "^i". A counter c is set to zero when the ^i is encountered. While in the Inverted Indenting Mode all input lines not preceded by a multiple carriage return are indented c tab stops in the output. Each line in the input which is preceded by a multiple carriage return is preceded by that many carriage returns in the output. Also it is indented in the output by as many tab stops as in the input, and it sets c equal to that number of tabs plus one. The normal paragraphing mode is restored by "^n". Quoted Overbar: An overbar is copied into the output if ^/ (overbar-slash) appears in the input. The following describes usage of the Sense Switches. [13] Sense Switch 1: on -- input from typewriter [14] off -- input from reader Sense Switch 2: on -- output to typewriter [15] off -- no typed output Sense Switch 3: on -- output to punch off -- no punched output Sense Switch 4: on -- prohibit hyphenation off -- allow hyphenation as per dictionary or display. Sense Switch 5 used by individual error halts Sense Switch 6 turn on at end of run to indicate no further input The Test Word is divided into four fields, with use as follows: Bits Meaning 11-17 length of justified line 7-10 output tab spacing (equal, starting at left margin) 1-6 number of lines per page (0 means no pagination) 0 if on, stop after current output page. To hyphenate a word that appears on the display, point [16] the light pen at the + figure between letters; it will [17] become a small =. If an erroneous + was hit, all = marks can be restored to + by penning the "OOPS" dot. When all [18] the satisfactory hyphenation-points are marked, pen "SAVE" to preserve the word in the dictionary or "FORGET" to accept [19] the hyphenation but not to retain it. (There will be no SAVE dot if the dictionary is full.) The Console version of [20] TJ-2 starts with a blank dictionary. Error halt aspects, indications, and recovery proced- ures are tabulated below. AC IO Meaning SS5 down, SS5 up, [21] Continue Continue -0 0 output line too insert carriage (likewise) [22] long return +0 +0 run completed start new run (likewise) 1 char illegal Concise ignore accept code 2 char illegal parity ignore accept 3 0 word too long forget word insert space 4 ... word to be hyphen- take it anyhow don't hyphenate ated ends in non- spacing character 6 page end of output continue (likewise) no. page 10 ... dictionary full clobber program don't save [23] 12 ... too much stretch- stretch as much don't stretch ing needed as possible 17 ... TW calls for very start over accept short line -------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES: Following notes are copyright 1993 by Daniel P. B. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted for Internet distribution and nonprofit use. Was TJ-2 a word processor? TJ-2 does not resemble modern word processors with "on-screen formatting" or "WYSIWYG editing." It does resemble earlier word processors like RUNOFF, TROFF or WordStar in which the editor and formatter are separate. Compared to word processors as we know them, TJ-2 had what I consider to be the essential features -- rudimentary paragraph formatting, centering, word wrap, and justification. On the other hand, it lacked page number, headers, footers, any kind of text attributes or text emphasis (there was not even an underscore feature). The hyphenation feature was surprisingly sophisticated. Note that a sort of graphic user interface was used, but only for the hyphenation feature. Notice that none of the following terms are used anywhere in the memo: application, document, editor, font, format, software, text, word processor, word wrap. The general writing style of the memo is similar to that, e.g. of the Digital PDP-1 Handbook. In particular, the capitalization of terms such as Test Word, Indented Text Mode, etc. is similar to that in the PDP-1 Handbook, which contains phrases such as "the Light Pen status bit is set to one," "the contents of the extended Program Counter in bits 2 through 17," etc. [1] PDP-1: The memos in this series were attributed to the "PDP-1 COMPUTER", not to a facility or organization. [2] "Cambridge, 39:" Zip codes were not introduced by the Post Office until about 1964. [3] "TJ-2:" Presumably there was a TJ-1, but I have no information on it. The title line, "TYPE JUSTIFYING PROGRAM," is underscored in the original. No name is credited as either author or programmer. The program was demonstrated to me by Pete Samson. It was my impression that he wrote it but others may have contributed. Although this memo was obviously produced with TJ-2, most of the other memoes in the series were not. [4] I've tried to duplicate the actual locations of added spaces and punctuation. "Typewriter:" the PDP-1 console typewriter, an IBM electric typewriter (typebar mechanism, not Selectric), modified by a company named Soroban to include switches and solenoids capable of sensing and initiating keystrokes. "Reader:" high-speed 400 "line"/second photoelectric punched paper-tape reader. "Punch:" 63 character/second paper tape punch manufactured by Teletype. [5] In the original, the period ending a sentence is always followed by either two spaces or three. [6] "Normal mode:" today we'd call this "word wrap" and take it for granted. At the time, not only was there no succinct name for the feature, but the concept itself was unfamiliar enough need a precise explanation. [7] "Carriage return:" both returned the carriage and advanced the line on the typewriter mechanisms used on the PDP-1. There was no distinct "line feed" operation to be concerned with. [8] "Concise code:" the character set used internally on the PDP-1, a six-bit code formed by truncating the full "FIO-DEC" codes, which included a parity bit. [9] "Test word:" bank of eighteen toggle switches on the PDP-1 console, often playing the same role that a command-line argument would play today. There was no provision for varying margins within a document. [10] Letters preceded by a caret here, e.g. ^q, appear in the original with an overbar above them. A nonspacing (dead key) overbar was part of the PDP-1 character set and frequently used as a syntactic convention to identify commands. On lines containing these characters I have chosen to transcribe the spaces inserted for justification precisely as they appear in the original, so as a result of inserting the caret these lines are now longer than the others. [11] Note that the terms used are simply "input" and "output," not "input stream," "input file," "input text," etc. [12] The period is outside the quotation marks. The New Hacker's Dictionary, 1991, comments that "Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses... This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the ... final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong to them." [13] "Sense Switch:" a bank of six toggle switches on the PDP-1 console, often playing the same role that a command-line switch would play today. [14] Since there was no text editor, "input from typewriter" was not much use except for testing, demonstrations, or tutorials. [15] Irregular vertical spacing here is accurately transcribed from original. [16] It's typical of the computer documentation style of the time that this is described verbally, with no picture of the screen. When hyphenating the word "justification," the display would initially show J+U+S+T+I+F+I+C+A+T+I+O+N The user would point the pen at hyphenation points until the displayed showed J+U+S=T+I+F+I=C+A=T+I+O+N [17] "Light pen:" a pointing device. It could not sense position. All it could do was detect the illumination of a point of light directly under it. Somewhat complicated strategies were needed to acquire and track the pen. [18] The word "all" is underscored in the original. [19] The "dictionary" was a temporary dictionary, kept in core (RAM) only for the duration of the session. This is not explained because it was taken for granted. There was no online storage for user files. [20] "Console version:" near the console was a device like a set of very small cubbyholes, designed to store fanfolded paper tapes. Programs for general use were stored in these cubbyholes and were referred to as the "console copies." There were about forty or fifty of them, including Expensive Typewriter, TECO, TJ-1, the MACRO and MIDAS assemblers, machine diagnostics, and SPACEWAR. [21] AC, IO -- the two main active registers of the PDP-1, whose contents were displayed in a set of indicator lights on the front panel. [22] -0 -- the PDP-1 was a one's complement machine. -0 was distinct from +0 and would have displayed as all lights on. [23] The slight misalignment in the last column -- i.e. the "d" in "don't save" aligns with the "l" in "likewise," rather than the left parenthesis -- is an accurate copy of the original. --Daniel P. B. Smith dpbsmith@world.std.com -- Daniel P. B. Smith dpbsmith@world.std.com From uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!ames!data.nas.nasa.gov!taligent!kip-51.taligent.com!user Mon Jan 25 00:09:49 CST 1993 Article: 33550 of alt.folklore.computers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!ames!data.nas.nasa.gov!taligent!kip-51.taligent.com!user From: tom_van_vleck@taligent.com (Tom Van Vleck) Subject: Re: First word processor Message-ID: Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers Sender: usenet@taligent.com (More Bytes Than You Can Read) Organization: Taligent Inc. References: Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 05:31:45 GMT Lines: 51 Status: R Daniel P. B. Smith wrote: >... A piece of software called TJ-2 (TJ for Type > Justifier) was in declining use (i.e. its peak was EARLIER) circa 1964 or > so at MIT. I believe it was used to print the Tech Model Railroader's > newsletter. It was a primitive, but recognizable RUNOFF-like system > (no attempt at WYSIWYG editing; separate editor/formatter). > ... > I'm PRETTY sure that Digital got into typesetting and had a package > called TYPSET/RUNOFF or something of the sort, TYPSET being the "real" > typesetter and RUNOFF intended to be the rough-proof-on-fixed-pitch-printer > tool. I think these antedated and influenced the UNIX tools, i.e. I > think the name TROFF is derived from the then-popular RUNOFF. > ... > I can't prove it, but I believe these historical features (paper tape, > letter-quality upper/lowercase typewriters) influenced the way Digital > designed products, which in turn influenced some of the thinking of the > designers of UNIX. MIT's Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) provided the MEMO, MODIFY, and DITTO commands as far back as 1962. MEMO was a command for typing in. MODIFY was a command to revise a file already typed in. Both were line number based. DITTO typed it out. These were upper-and-lower-case versions of CTSS's INPUT, EDIT, and PRINT commands. They were primitive and hard to use, and I don't think they were necessarily the first: TX-0 had been around for some years and many neat hacks had been written for it. The first editor I ever saw that let you modify a file AND look at its contents was called CTEST9, written for CTSS by IBM's Art Samuel, the checkers program guy. This editor was followed by ED, which had input and edit modes and a change command, very like today's UNIX line editors. TYPSET and RUNOFF, written by Jerome H. Saltzer as tools to format his MIT PhD thesis, were the next generation of document preparation programs on CTSS. TYPSET was a line editor, like ED, but it worked with upper and lower case letters. RUNOFF was the output program. It typed files out on an IBM 1050 Selectric typewriter. RUNOFF had the basic idea of "command lines" beginning with dot and text to be formatted on lines not beginning with dot. (Saltzer credited Expensive Typewriter as one inspiration for TYPSET and RUNOFF.) RUNOFF was indeed the ancestor of roff, troff, etc. TYPSET and TUNOFF were used for Multics documentation, while it was being developed on CTSS. We needed a version that would run on the Multics machine, and Rudd Canaday and Dennis Ritchie produced a BCPL version of RUNOFF that was used for years as the Multics text formatter. J. F. Ossanna was another Multician and colleague of Canaday and Ritchie at Bell Telephone Laboratories: he wrote many documents in RUNOFF and was the author of UNIX roff. tom From uchinews!linac!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!paladin.american.edu!gatech!emory!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!eff!world!dpbsmith Wed Jan 27 22:21:54 CST 1993 Article: 33703 of alt.folklore.computers Xref: uchinews alt.folklore.computers:33703 comp.sys.unisys:751 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.sys.unisys Path: uchinews!linac!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!paladin.american.edu!gatech!emory!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!eff!world!dpbsmith From: dpbsmith@world.std.com (Daniel P. B. Smith) Subject: Re: HISTORY OF WORD PROCESSING Message-ID: Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA References: <1993Jan15.173341.3969@wam.umd.edu> <1993Jan24.075244.27275@spectrum.CMC.COM> Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 01:25:05 GMT Lines: 38 Status: R wex@bigmax.ulowell.edu >Can anybody date WordStar (no jokes please) I know the original >was done by J. R. Barnaby on an Imsai (I think) but don't >remember when; surely the first PC Word Processing Program. Hmmm... an Imsai? I wonder. The first microcomputer word processor I ever heard about was Electric Pencil. "Fire in the Valley" attributes it to Michael Shrayer and dates it at 1976. By golly, "Fire in the Valley" says that Seymour Rubinstein left IMSAI to found MicroPro, and its first products were SuperSort and WordMaster, by "Rob Barnaby." "The second was a text editor that Barnaby had begun working on while still at IMSAI." The release date for Word Master seems to be September 1978 but it seems to have been just a text editor; "MicroPro was inundated with requests for a word processor like Electric Pencil. WordStar was the elaboration of WordMaster into an actual word processor." They indicated it was released in mid-1979. EasyWriter for the Apple ][ was another early product. Fire in the Valley doesn't seem to have a date, but it was roughly contemporary with WordStar. The first word processor for the IBM PC was definitely EasyWriter. It was one of the product actually marketed by IBM, along with PC-DOS and Visicalc. WordStar was distinctly later. I remember an article or letter or something by Steve Wozniak, in Softalk I think, probably circa 1980, in which he complains bitterly about having tried all the [native-mode] word processors available for the Apple ][ and not finding any of them much good. "You have to go to CP/M [i.e. WordStar] and that makes me mad." Peeling rated all the Apple WP programs at the time and said, of WordStar, "this is the blow-away program." They recommended it despite its high cost and the need to buy a Microsoft SoftCard add-in to enable the Apple to run CP/M. -- Daniel P. B. Smith dpbsmith@world.std.com From uchinews!linac!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!uunet!seas.gwu.edu!dutcher Wed Jan 27 22:23:56 CST 1993 Article: 33700 of alt.folklore.computers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!linac!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!uunet!seas.gwu.edu!dutcher From: dutcher@seas.gwu.edu (Sylvia Dutcher) Subject: Re: First word processor was Pete Samson's TJ-1, c 1964. Message-ID: <1993Jan26.134503.16036@seas.gwu.edu> Sender: news@seas.gwu.edu Organization: George Washington University References: Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 13:45:03 GMT Lines: 60 Status: R [The following forwarded from Phil Gagner] In article dpbsmith@world.std.com (Daniel P. B. Smith) writes: > >I'm PRETTY sure that Digital got into typesetting and had a package >called TYPSET/RUNOFF or something of the sort, TYPSET being the "real" >typesetter and RUNOFF intended to be the rough-proof-on-fixed-pitch-printer >tool. I think these antedated and influenced the UNIX tools, i.e. I >think the name TROFF is derived from the then-popular RUNOFF. Digital certainly was into typesetting -- they had a TYPESET-8 system (based on the PDP-8) in at least dozen, maybe more, newspapers around the country by 1972. These used a primative and rather ugly typesetting language (text/c for center, text/r for right quad, text/l for left quad) and drove Linotype machines and other such devices. DEC later developed TYPESET-10 and TYPESET-11 packages which incorporated video display editing (Dan Bricklin developed a rather pretty editing terminal based on the PDP-11/34 while at DEC) and powerful macro abilities. This was all true typesetting -- letterspacing, kerning, etc., and was in full flower around the 1970-1980 period. RUNOFF, on the other hand, was a crock distributed and maintained by DEC but emasculated and lifted from M.I.T.'s program of the same name. It did basic text formatting (justification using spaces, crufty hyphenation, etc.). DEC used RUNOFF to type its user manuals, which is directly reflected in their quality. Later, many of the manuals were prepared using TYPESET-11, and some, mainly the Large Computer Group manuals, using TYPESET-10. >The fancy features in TECO were intended to provide a rich enough >feature set to make [off-line editing] possible. This isn't how I remember it. One of the early features of TECO was the display editor. Even without it, the wonderful thing about TECO was that you could perform wholesale edits of text using simple commands. From its inception TECO was interactive, although in the early days you'd read in (Yank) a buffer of paper tape then Punch it out (hence the Y and P commands). TECO was used occassionally as a batch processor (Gosper's hack to compute continued fractions using TECO ran for many hours), but only as a "programming language. The only sense in which it was intended to provide batch operation is that it was always intended as a programming language for editing. > >I can't prove it, but I believe these historical features (paper tape, >letter-quality upper/lowercase typewriters) influenced the way Digital >designed products, which in turn influenced some of the thinking of the >designers of UNIX. You're quite correct, but the connection is even more direct. While at M.I.T. AI, I maintained TECO and used the other tools. The people at DEC were quite close to, and quite aware of, what was going on in the universities, especially M.I.T. When I joined DEC I worked on the TYPESET projects, and we also rewrote RUNOFF to add the features the were in CTSS/Multics versions. The connection was quite clear in my view. As to their influence on UNIX, I wasn't there so can't speak to it, but the tools look pretty similar. troff and nroff borrow heavily from RUNOFF in philosophy, and they appear to borrow some macro features from TYPESET-11 (this could be an illusion based on the fact that they're doing the same sorts of things). -- Phil Gagner