Re: Removal of catman from base

On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 4:48 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon_at_orthanc.ca> wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Sep 2017, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>
> I'm pretty sure that SVR1 had catman and roff was an extra and somewhat
>> pricey software package.
>>
>
> The SVR1 (and 2) systems I had access to were all CTIX, and it shipped
> with nroff/troff.  And the 3B4000 & 3B2s I used later (SVR2 and later) also
> had nroff/troff.
>
> Maybe you're thinking of ditroff (Device Independent Troff) that was sold
> for gobs of $$$ through the AT&T Toolchest.  Certainly none of the SVRx
> machines I used shipped with ditroff.  I don't even think ditroff was on
> our 3B2 SVR3 source tapes.
>
> But I very clearly recall the absense of manpage source on that SVR3 tape.
> I remember howling bloody murder at AT&T Canada over that.  This was at
> Athabasca University - a distance education institution.  We typeset all
> our own course materials (using Softquad's sqtroff), and not being able to
> include properly typeset manpages with the course documentation (especially
> reflecting our local modifications to the systems) made me ... grumpy.


Back in school, our SunOS 3, SunOS 4 and VAX running BSD 4.{2,3} we had to
run a special ditroff to use the Imagen laser printer. And it was a special
deal that came with the printer to support document creation on the Unix
boxes. I don't know if it was an extra cost item for the Imagen printer or
not, but it wasn't part of the base system.

Warner