Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 12 Sep 2017 21:20:53 +0000
From:      "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>
To:        Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>
Cc:        Gordon Tetlow <gordon@tetlows.org>, current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Removal of catman from base
Message-ID:  <78909.1505251253@critter.freebsd.dk>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.1709121210140.54096@orthanc.ca>
References:  <20170912184200.GD99742@gmail.com> <77524.1505242222@critter.freebsd.dk> <alpine.BSF.2.21.1709121210140.54096@orthanc.ca>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--------
In message <alpine.BSF.2.21.1709121210140.54096@orthanc.ca>, Lyndon Nerenb=
erg writes:
>> That was actually not why catman was brought into the world:  ATT/USL
>> thought text-processing was The Goods so they unbundled it base SVR
>> and invented catman to make up for the missing nroff.
>
>Not quite.  They (AT&T) sold the rights to sell typeset manuals to some =

>publishing house (I forget which), at which point they stopped shipping =

>the *roff source for the manpages on the source tapes.  Instead, you got =

>pre-formatted "cat" pages on the source tape.  I think this happened =

>starting with SVR3.

I'm pretty sure that SVR1 had catman and roff was an extra and somewhat
pricey software package.

-- =

Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    =

Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence=
.



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?78909.1505251253>