
Reviving the 1973 Unix Programmer's Manual - hobo_mark
https://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20171119/
======
dfabulich
> _The text of the manual was written using the_ ed _text editor._

I guess I should have known, but I had no idea that anyone had written a
50,000-word 300-page manual in _ed_. It has a bit of a, uh, reputation.

[https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.txt](https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-
msg.txt)

~~~
Koshkin
What kind of "reputation"? It is quite usable for typing in text. Hell, even

    
    
      cat > myfile.txt << EOF
    

works fine in many situation. Sure, if one can't think straight, makes a lot
of typos and errors that cannot be quickly fixed with a simple backspace,
needs a lot (and I mean _a lot_ ) of complicated refactoring to be done many
times over, then sure - _ed_ is not for them. (Also, do not forget _ed_ 's
close cousin - _sed_ , a "stream editor" that is widely used even today.)

~~~
nazri1
I'd like to think that programmers back then most likely "graduated" from
using punch cards, hence they have a higher mental guard against typos and
mistakes when writing their program (or essays), compared to programmers that
grow up with unlimited undo/redo. Back then if you had a typo you'd most
likely have to wait overnight, or even days to get the notice so you spend a
lot of time proofreading your text, and over time it becomes a second nature
to write something right (most of the time).

~~~
lostboys67
Back in the day you wrote your program on paper and sent it to the punch
operators

------
scoot
_" The number of UNIX installations is now above 20, and many more are
expected."_

Understatement of the year, 1973.

~~~
contingencies
Nice pick :) Added to
[http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

~~~
Bromskloss
I don't use `gem`. Are these available in a format other than hardcoded into
the source code?

~~~
contingencies
[https://gist.github.com/globalcitizen/dba12c237722811e64fb86...](https://gist.github.com/globalcitizen/dba12c237722811e64fb86ac1faa341c)

------
scoot
I was amazed to see speech synthesis (speak / vs) as a standard feature. A
little googling lead me to this: "Donald Sherman orders a pizza using a
talking computer, Dec 4, 1974"[1]

I seem to have a personal difficulty imagining the level of sophistication
that existed prior my own awareness a particular technology; in the same way
that it might sometimes appear that before color photography, the world was
black-and-white.

I'm grateful to the technology archaeologist who set the record straight.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94d_h_t2QAA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94d_h_t2QAA)

~~~
mmjaa
>personal difficulty imagining the level of sophistication that existed prior

I think this is something that happens in our industry specifically - every
few years (to me it seems like every 4 years) - we go through these phases of
amnesia. I honestly think it has to do with comp-sci grads launching
themselves into the industry, and .. rather than catch up on their history,
re-invent things that have been standard for decades.

As you get more experience in this industry (in my case, 30+ years worth) you
start to see this more and more. Something to do with the cyclomatic
complexity of comp-sci history, in my opinion ..

~~~
bandrami
I usually feel bad telling somebody he's spent 6 months re-inventing either
Expect or Inetd (for some reason it's those two more often than anything
else). But it's ultimately for the best to tell them.

~~~
mmjaa
Many, many good things come from re-invention in our world. I only wish there
were a longer-term awareness .. because there is a devolutionary angle, where
people sort of forget why its important to do/not-do things certain ways, and
end up leading us all into the abyss; cf- encryption, video games, internet,
etc.

------
emmelaich
As Diomidis says, the language is wonderfully clear; for example see the
sentence on grep's -v option.

Nice also to see the permuted index and BUGS sections.

Lastly, wonderfully literate. Finding things like _hapax legomena_ is great.

------
Tempest1981
From the manual:

    
    
      Logging out.
    
      There are three ways to log out:
    
       1) You can simply hang up the phone.

------
sverige
This was an update of the previous edition because of the many changes that
had been made in the intervening _months_. They went at a torrid pace for a
few years there.

It's amazing how much they got so right in design philosophy. And of course
I'm a huge fan of the readability of their documentation. All documentation
should be this good.

------
linschn
As highlighted on TUHS maling list:

> When you type to UNIX,a gnome deep in the system is gathering your
> characters and saving them in a secret place. The characters will not be
> given to a program until you type a return (or new-line), as described above
> in Logging in.

------
davidwihl
I fondly have paper copies of Vol I and Vol II on my shelf next to the Multics
book. The PDF referred by the above seems to be only one volume, with command
references not the technical papers.

~~~
enf
You may be interested in the similar process I went through in 1997 to make a
PDF of the Sixth Edition manual, including the papers:
[https://github.com/ericfischer/v6man/](https://github.com/ericfischer/v6man/)

The files for the Fourth Edition papers did not survive, only what is what is
archived at
ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixArchive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v4/

------
ilaksh
Is there an emulator that can run this version of Unix and ideally has the
software available?

~~~
supergarfield
SIMH is a good emulator for 70s-80s minicomputers. The Unix heritage society
(TUHS) has a lot of software, including early Unices, at their Unix archive.
Some of it is a little tricky to get to work, but v6 and v7 Unix both work
like charms in my experience.

Look at
[http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Boot_Images/](http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Boot_Images/)
for software (you have to look around in the readmes a little). Debian and
Ubuntu both have SIMH packages.

Edit: This article ([https://connect.ed-diamond.com/GNU-Linux-
Magazine/GLMF-102/8...](https://connect.ed-diamond.com/GNU-Linux-
Magazine/GLMF-102/88-miles-a-l-heure)) explains how to run some of these old
Unices, and the author also builds and uses an IRC client on 2.11BSD. It's
written in French, but Google translate does an OK job on it.

