Re: <OK> [Groff] Using groff as one's main WP/TP

[M Bianchi]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 02:02:15AM +1000, Robert Marks wrote:
> I've been using *roff since the days of nroff and
> daisywheel printers, i.e., 1978.  Am I alone?

No, Mark.  I wrote my first nroff documents at Bell Labs, in 1974 or 1975, on
what were called Programmers' Workbench UNIX systems.  The ms and mm macros
were the latest things.  The priveledged got to use troff on CAT
phototypesetters and to develop the output using smelly chemicals.  Changing
the fonts involved opening the typesetter and using allen wrenches to replace
the films which were mounted on heavy metal quadrants.  There were 4 fonts
mounted in the 4 font positions:
        Roman           .fp 1
        Bold            .fp 2
        Italic          .fp 3
        Special         .fp 4

The Special font was for the Greek letters and math symbols.
There was a set of quandrants for Times and another for Helvetica.

We also wrote PL/I programs on those machines, which then submitted jobs to IBM
370s.  The world around us was still using punched cards.

        Those were the days, my friend ...

--
 Mike Bianchi