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From: marty1@houdi.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: DAEMONs -- what does GCOS mean anyway ?
Message-ID: <1379@houdi.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Oct-87 11:09:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: houdi.1379
Posted: Fri Oct 16 11:09:12 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Oct-87 01:56:07 EDT
References: <1131@nrcvax.UUCP> <3550002@hplsdla.HP.COM> <392@xios.XIOS.UUCP> <1000@trotter.usma.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel
Lines: 34
Summary: The C/A/T is newer than the typesetter that ran under GECOS at MH

In article <1000@trotter.usma.edu>, bill@trotter.usma.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
> In article <748@ea.ecn.purdue.edu>, davy@ea.ecn.purdue.edu (Dave Curry) writes:
> > 
> > GCOS was an operating system on the General Electric something-or-other
> > computer I believe... I still don't see what "cat" has to do with it
> > though.
> 
> Having looked thru my more ancient UNIX documentation I find on the page
> covering troff(1) the following passage:
> 
> .....for printing on a Graphics Systems C/A/T phototypesetter;
> 
> further down under the -g option it says:
> 
> Prepare output for a GCOS phototypsetter .....
> 
> 
> So it looks like we are talking about two different GCOS's.  And it would
> appear from the first line that this is where "cat" might have come from.
> 
> Now, lets have someone who really knows come back with the definitive 
> answer.  :-)

Sorry, I can only say definitively that that's not the answer.  Before
the C/A/T typesetter became available to troff users at Bell Labs, all
troff output went to a typesetter that ran under the GCOS system at
Murray Hill.  Later documentation says the -g option is for the "Murray
Hill Computation Center phototypesetter."  So the so-called GCOS
phototypesetter is not a different GCOS, and the cat command was named
before C/A/T and not after it.

M. B. Brilliant					Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520	(201)-949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733	ihnp4!houdi!marty1