TYPSET and RUNOFF

TYPSET was a document editor that was used with the 1964-released RUNOFF program, one of the earliest text formatting programs to see significant use.[1]

Of two earlier print/formatting programs DITTO and TJ-2, only the latter had, and introduced, text justification; RUNOFF also added pagination.

The name RUNOFF, and similar names led to other formatting program implementations. By 1982 Runoff[2] largely became associated with Digital Equipment Corporation and Unix computers. DEC used the terms VAX DSR and DSR to refer to VAX DIGITAL Standard Runoff.[3]

History

CTSS

The original RUNOFF type-setting program for CTSS was written by Jerome H. Saltzer. Bob Morris and Doug McIlroy translated that from MAD assembler to BCPL.[4] Morris and McIlroy then moved the BCPL version to Multics when the IBM 7094 on which CTSS ran was being shut down.

Multics

Documentation for the Multics version of RUNOFF described it as "types out text segments in manuscript form."[5]

Other versions and implementations

A later version of runoff for Multics was written in PL/I by Dennis Capps, in 1974.[6] This runoff code was the ancestor of the machine language roff that was written for the fledgling Unix.

Other versions of Runoff were developed for various computer systems including Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-11 minicomputer systems running RT-11, RSTS/E, RSX on Digital's PDP-10[7] and for OpenVMS on VAX minicomputers, as well as UNIVAC Series 90 mainframes using the EDT text editor under the VS/9 operating system. These different releases of Runoff typically had little in common except the convention of indicating a command to Runoff by beginning the line with a period.

Another notable program, based on work by Donald Knuth, is named TeX; a successor to TeX was announced by Knuth in 2010.[8]

The origin of IBM's SCRIPT (markup) software began in 1968 when "IBM contracted Stuart Madnick of MIT to write a simple document preparation ..."[9] to run on CP/67.[10] He modeled it on MIT's CTSS RUNOFF.[11][12]

Background

RUNOFF was written in 1964 for the CTSS operating system by Jerome H. Saltzer in MAD and FAP.

It actually consisted of a pair of programs, TYPSET (which was basically a document editor), and RUNOFF (the output processor). RUNOFF had support for pagination and headers, as well as text justification (TJ-2 appears to have been the earliest text justification system, but it did not have the other capabilities).

RUNOFF is a direct predecessor of the runoff document formatting program of Multics, which in turn was the ancestor of the roff and nroff document formatting programs of Unix, and their descendants. It was also the ancestor of FORMAT for the IBM System/360, and of course indirectly of every computerized word processing system.

Likewise, RUNOFF for CTSS was the predecessor of the various RUNOFFs for DEC's operating systems, via the RUNOFF developed by the University of California, Berkeley's Project Genie for the SDS 940 system.[13][14]

The name is alleged to have come from the phrase at the time, I'll run off a copy.[15]

Example

Input:

When you're ready to order,
call us at our toll free number:
.BR
.CENTER
1-800-555-xxxx
.BR
Your order will be processed
within two working days and shipped

Output:

   When you're ready to order, call us at our toll free number:

                             1-800-555-xxxx

   Your order will be processed within two working days and shipped
gollark: According to my random number generator, I should now be making some quip about #5.
gollark: Oh yes, I don't really like manually managing memory.
gollark: Is it? It seems normal.
gollark: Unless I wrote it, as I did.
gollark: Nope. I don't know what a distance matrix is.

See also

Notes
  1. Jerome H. Saltzer (November 6, 1964). "TYPSET and RUNOFF, Memorandum editor and type-out commands".
  2. a name not possible before lower case letters were introduced to file names
  3. VAX DSR Quick Reference Guide. 1982.
  4. "Multics Features". Ken Thompson wrote a version of QED in BCPL, and Doug McIlroy and Bob Morris wrote Multics runoff in BCPL based on Jerry Saltzer's MAD version of RUNOFF
  5. "Info segment for runoff command". MIT.edu.
  6. Subject: Re: UNIX manpage history: CTSS RUNOFF 
From: Jerry Saltzer Date: ...
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">...(snip)...</div><span style="float:right;">... "compose"</span>
>> >> was apparently a PL/I re-write of RUNOFF on Multics. ...
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">...(snip)...</div><span style="float:right;">... record shows Dennis Capps as</span>
>> >> starting ''compose'' in 1974.
    — "UNIX manpage history: CTSS RUNOFF". October 23, 2011.
  7. "The Language List". ... RUNOFF - An early text-formatting language supported under TOPS-10 on the PDP-10.
  8. "Knuth declares TeX obsolete, unveils successor". 2010.
  9. "Script/PC". PC Magazine. March 19, 1985. p. 210. IBM contracted Stuart Madnick of MIT to write a simple document preparation ..."
  10. "SCRIPT, An On-Line Manuscript Processing System".
  11. "What does sCrIPT mean?". SCRIPT was developed for CP-67/CMS by Stuart Madnick at MIT, succeeding CTSS RUNOFF.
  12. "History of UNIX Manpages". 1967: SCRIPT (Stuart Madnick). In 1967, Madnick ported the RUNOFF code to the IBM CP67/CMS at IBM as SCRIPT. The documentation of SCRIPT explicitly ...
  13. John V. Everett (1997-02-08). "Re: Runoffs (was: TJ-2, a very early word-processor-like program for the PDP-1)". Newsgroup: alt.sys.pdp10. Usenet: 5diaq1$6cn$2@kirin.wwa.com. Retrieved 2008-11-14.
  14. Barnes, Larry (27 March 1973). RUNOFF: A Program for the Preparation of Documents (PDF). Bitsavers' PDF Document Archive. Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. R-37. Retrieved 14 November 2008.
  15. "What does troff mean?". The New Hacker's Dictionary. ... ROFF which was in turn modeled after the Multics and CTSS program RUNOFF by Jerome Saltzer (that name came from the expression “to run off a copy”).

References

Honeywell Bull, Inc. (Feb 1985). Multics Commands and Active Functions (AG92-06) (PDF). pp. 3-822 to 3-842. Retrieved Feb 23, 2012.

"Runnoff documentation". MIT. Retrieved 25 July 2013.

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