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Subject:Re: PDF & single-sourcing history From:Sandy Harris <sandyinchina -at- gmail -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 6 Mar 2013 11:48:29 -0500
On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com> wrote:
> Were man pages single-sourced? I always thought they were just files.
> Did someone produce printed manuals, and if so, how?
Yes. Some old DEC system (RT-11?) had a 'runoff' print command, so
Unix got nroff(1) (new runoff) and troff(1) (typesetter runoff); man(1)
pages were written and stored using the markup for those, with a
manuals-specific macro package.
The online stuff, which had to display on a dumb terminal with quite
limited facilities, was generated with nroff and the printed manuals
got better formatting via troff, but both came from the same source.
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