[Groff] history additions

[Bernd Warken]

In Linux Journal May 2000 Issue 73, page 20, the article "Getcha
Program!" by Peter H. Salus mentions interesting facts on the prehistory
of roff.  Maybe it could be useful for the info file's history section.

Peter Salus wrote:

  J.E. Saltzer had written "runoff" for CTSS.  Bob Morris moved it to
the 635, and called it "roff".  Ritchie rewrote that as "rf" for the
PDP-7, before there was UNIX.  At the same time, the summer of 1969,
Doug McIllroy rewrote roff in BCPL (...), extending and simplifying it.
It was McIllroy's version that first Joe Osanna and, after his death,
Brian Kernighan turned into troff...

  Nearly a decade later, Ted Dolotta created the memorandum (-mm)
macros, with a lot of input from John Mashey.  Thereafter, Eric Allman
wrote the BSD -me macros.


There is a book by Salus "A Quarter Century of UNIX" that might provide
even more details.