Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cbmvax!amix!ford
From: ford@amix.commodore.com (Mike "Ford" Ditto)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga Unix and A3000UX announcement
Message-ID: <1039@amix.commodore.com>
Date: 10 Feb 91 09:58:16 GMT
References: <5843@auspex.auspex.com>
Organization: Commodore-Amiga Unix Development
Lines: 43

guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
> >	On-line manual pages and "man" command
> So AT&T finally put them back?  Or did Commodore buy the on-line man
> page product and include that?

SVR4 now includes the man pages and the BSD man program, but it's not
very will integrated.  AT&T doesn't, as far as I know, provide
makefiles or anything that install the man pages in a format readable
by the man program.  We ended up essentially writing a new man program
anyway.

> >	Traditional Unix document preparation system (nroff, troff, -ms,
> >	-mm, -mv, eqn, tbl, pic, grap, troff->postscript filters, etc.)
> 
> Sounds like Commodore bought DWB and folded that in; "*roff" and stuff
> made it into AT&T's S5R4, but mainly for "BSD compatibility", which
> means they folded in the ancient V7-vintage "*roff" in BSD.  DWB isn't
> bundled with S5R4, unless something's changed since I last heard....

Oops.  Now that you mention it, I realize that I lied:  pic and grap
are not included for that very reason; the rest are part of the BSD
troff.  We are debating whether to include DWB in future releases;
evidently it's rather expensive per binary license.

My only complaint about the BSD troff after using it for a while now
is that it trashes bit 7 of input text, meaning that international
characters are out.  (I use a sed script to turn the ones I need into
overstrike commands.)  Of course the latest DWB we have has the same
problem; I am hoping there is an improved version.

> Also, as I remember, "/dev/fd", implemented as a file system

An implementation detail that I didn't consider interesting (and do
consider pointless -- /dev/fd/ would have been better implemented as a
regular device driver unless you want, for example, readdir to only
show fds currently open).

					-=] Ford [=-

"The number of Unix installations	(In Real Life:  Mike Ditto)
has grown to 10, with more expected."	ford@amix.commodore.com
- The Unix Programmer's Manual,		uunet!cbmvax!ditto
  2nd Edition, June, 1972.		ford@kenobi.commodore.com