Authentication-Results: minnie.tuhs.org; dkim=fail reason="signature verification failed" (2048-bit key; unprotected) header.d=gmail.com header.i=@gmail.com header.b="EUWHOe4A"; dkim-atps=neutral From: Rob Pike Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2022 22:48:03 +1100 To: Jaap Akkerhuis Subject: Re: [TUHS] Brian Kernighan and very early *roff history Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" It was definitely Dennis, at least for the cleanup part I was referring to. -rob On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 9:14 PM Jaap Akkerhuis wrote: > > > > On Jan 14, 2022, at 1:10, Rob Pike wrote: > > > > Dennis spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the troff code in the late > 1980s, if I remember right, moving it to modern C. He got annoyed by it one > day. > > If I remember correctly, it was actually Ken. He also turned it > in a single binary. (Troff -N turned it into nroff). > > > It was the "ditroff" variant although honestly I don't remember us ever > calling it that. It was just the current version of troff. Not sure where > the name came from. Perhaps it was us but I think of it as a foreign name. > > Originally Brian called it "Typesetter Independent Troff" in the > article he wrote about it and for some reason people started to > call it "Device Independent". > > jaap > >