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Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (1971)

tuhs.org

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Re: Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (1971)

#11

Post by dang »

knome wrote: post #5
teddyh wrote: post #3

Why does this supposedly old file contain UTF-8 encoded characters? (The apostrophe in “ search in the user’s current directory ” is U+2019, RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK.)

It's not an old file. It's a new file resulting from running OCR on a PDF of a physical manual. Clipping off the filename in the original URL, you'll find a directory [1] with an explanation in the README [2] [1] http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Mc... [2] http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Mc...

Thank you, that's a critical bit of context.

Re: Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (1971)

#12

Post by dang »

Doug McIlroy on what this is and why it is remarkable (thanks to knome for this explanation):

http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Mc...

This is amazingly cool and clearly deserves more attention, so we've changed the title and re-upped the submission to give more people a chance to see it.

(Submitted title was 'DMR Unix “Edition Zero” Manual Unearthed (restoration in progress)'.)

Re: Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (1971)

#13

Post by krylon »

gamache wrote: post #2

There must be some OCR errors in there -- the system call "create" was spelled with an "e"!

Well, there's this quote by Ken Thompson, who was asked if he'd do anything different if were to start over on Unix: "I would spell creat with an e".

With that in mind, it's kind of funny to see that "correction" made by some OCR software.

Re: Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (1971)

#16

Post by lisper »

dang wrote: post #11
knome wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an old file. It's a new file resulting from running OCR on a PDF of a physical manual. Clipping off the filename in the original URL, you'll find a directory [1] with an explanation in the README [2] [1] http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Mc... [2] http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Mc...

Thank you, that's a critical bit of context.

Indeed, and it's a good illustration of a flaw in the HN comment ranking algorithm: this "critical piece of context" is at the bottom -- and likely will stay there -- because it's the child of a heavily downvoted comment.

Re: Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (1971)

#18

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

lisper wrote: post #16
dang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, that's a critical bit of context.

Indeed, and it's a good illustration of a flaw in the HN comment ranking algorithm: this "critical piece of context" is at the bottom -- and likely will stay there -- because it's the child of a heavily downvoted comment.

So include it in a new top-level comment and everyone wins.

Re: Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (1971)

#19

Post by dllthomas »

geofft wrote: post #17

This should put to rest the persistent, pedantic hypercorrection that the "cat" command is so named because it "catenates" files as opposed to concatenating them.

Don't get your hopes up - it seems to remain possible the abbreviation preceded this document and was misattributed by Richie.

Re: Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (1971)

#20

Post by c3534l »

Reading this manual describe concepts without the use of computer jargon as brand new concepts makes the language sound really old-fashioned, like reading Jonathon Swift or Thomas Paine. Part of that, I'm sure, is that this document is now 45 years old. It kind of makes me want to go back and read the instruction manual that would have come with the first TVs and such.
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