TYPSET and RUNOFF

TYPSET is an early document editor that was used with the 1964-released RUNOFF program, one of the earliest text formatting programs to see significant use.^[1]

TYPSET and RUNOFF

Original author(s)	Jerome H. Saltzer
Initial release	1964; 60 years ago (1964)
Written in	MAD and FAP
Operating system	Compatible Time-Sharing System
Platform	IBM 7094
Type	Document editor and text formatting programs

Of two earlier print/formatting programs DITTO and TJ-2, only the latter had, and introduced, text justification; RUNOFF also added pagination.

The name RUNOFF, and similar names led to other formatting program implementations. By 1982, Runoff (a name not possible before lowercase letters were introduced to filenames) largely became associated with Digital Equipment Corporation and Unix computers. DEC used the terms VAX DSR and DSR to refer to VAX DIGITAL Standard Runoff.^[2]

History

CTSS

The original RUNOFF type-setting program for CTSS was written by Jerome H. Saltzer circa 1964. Bob Morris and Doug McIlroy translated that from MAD to BCPL.^[3] Morris and McIlroy then moved the BCPL version to Multics when the IBM 7094 on which CTSS ran was being shut down.

Multics

Documentation for the Multics version of RUNOFF described it as "types out text segments in manuscript form."^[4]

Other versions and implementations

A later version of runoff for Multics was written in PL/I by Dennis Capps, in 1974.^[5] This runoff code was the ancestor of roff that was written for the fledgling Unix in assembly language by Ken Thompson.

Other versions of Runoff were developed for various computer systems including Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-11 minicomputer systems running RT-11, RSTS/E, RSX on Digital's PDP-10^[6] and for OpenVMS on VAX minicomputers, as well as UNIVAC Series 90 mainframes using the EDT text editor under the VS/9 operating system. These different releases of Runoff typically had little in common except the convention of indicating a command to Runoff by beginning the line with a period.

The origin of IBM's SCRIPT software began in 1968 when IBM contracted Stuart Madnick of MIT to write a simple document preparation tool^[7] for CP/67,^[8] which he modelled on MIT's CTSS RUNOFF.^[9]

Background

RUNOFF was written in 1964 for the CTSS operating system by Jerome H. Saltzer in MAD and FAP.

It actually consisted of a pair of programs, TYPSET (which was basically a document editor), and RUNOFF (the output processor). RUNOFF had support for pagination and headers, as well as text justification (TJ-2 appears to have been the earliest text justification system, but it did not have the other capabilities).

RUNOFF is a direct predecessor of the runoff document formatting program of Multics, which in turn was the ancestor of the roff and nroff document formatting programs of Unix, and their descendants. It was also the ancestor of FORMAT for the IBM System/360, and of course indirectly of every computerized word processing system.

Likewise, RUNOFF for CTSS was the predecessor of the various RUNOFFs for DEC's operating systems, via the RUNOFF developed by the University of California, Berkeley's Project Genie for the SDS 940 system.^[10][11]

The name is alleged to have come from the phrase at the time, I'll run off a copy.^[12]

TYPESET contains features inspired by a variety of other programs including Colossal Typewriter and Expensive Typewriter.^[13]

Example

Input:

When you're ready to order, call us at our toll free number: .BR .CENTER 1-800-555-xxxx .BR Your order will be processed within two working days and shipped 

Output:

 When you're ready to order, call us at our toll free number:   1-800-555-xxxx Your order will be processed within two working days and shipped 

See also

• SCRIPT (markup)
• TECO
• TJ-2

Further reading

• MIT Computation Center (August 15, 1965). "Manuscript typing and editing". In P. A. Crisman (ed.). The Compatible Time-Sharing System: A Programmer's Guide (second ed.). MIT Press. pp. 419–432. ISBN 9780262030137.
• J.H. Saltzer (January 8, 1965). "Experimental Additions to the RUNOFF Command". Programming Staff Note 40. Project MAC, Cambridge.
• Multics Commands and Active Functions (AG92-06) (PDF). Honeywell Bull, Inc. Feb 1985. pp. 3-822 to 3-842. Retrieved April 20, 2024.
• OpenVMS DIGITAL Standard Runoff Reference Manual (PDF). Digital Equipment Corporation. May 1993. Retrieved April 20, 2024 – via Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

References

1. J. H. Saltzer (November 6, 1964), "TYPSET and RUNOFF, Memorandum editor and type-out commands", M.I.T. Computation Center memo CC-244 and Project MAC memo MAC-M-193, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. Bader, William (June 16, 2023). "DEC VAX History". Retrieved 2024-04-20. DSR stands for Digital Standard Runoff, a text formatter similar to roff.
3. "Multics Features". Ken Thompson wrote a version of QED in BCPL, and Doug McIlroy and Bob Morris wrote Multics runoff in BCPL based on Jerry Saltzer's MAD version of RUNOFF
4. "Info segment for runoff command". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. August 30, 1979. Function: types out text segments in manuscript form.
5. Jerry Saltzer (October 23, 2011). "UNIX manpage history: CTSS RUNOFF". "compose" was apparently a PL/I re-write of RUNOFF on Multics. […] the secondary record shows Dennis Capps as starting compose in 1974.
6. . January 23, 1995. Archived from the original on 2018-10-05. Retrieved 2024-04-20. RUNOFF - An early text-formatting language supported under TOPS-10 on the PDP-10.
7. "Script/PC". PC Magazine. March 19, 1985. p. 210. IBM contracted Stuart Madnick of MIT to write a simple document preparation
8. Madnick, Stuart E.; Moulton, Allen (August 1968). "SCRIPT, An On-Line Manuscript Processing System" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Engineering Writing and Speech. EWS-11 (2). IEEE: 92–100. doi:10.1109/TEWS.1968.4322339. S2CID 51633921. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
9. "History of UNIX Manpages". 1967: SCRIPT (Stuart Madnick). In 1967, Madnick ported the RUNOFF code to the IBM CP67/CMS at IBM as SCRIPT.
10. John V. Everett (1997-02-08). "Re: Runoffs (was: TJ-2, a very early word-processor-like program for the PDP-1)". Newsgroup: alt.sys.pdp10. Usenet: 5diaq1$6cn$[e-mail]. Retrieved 2008-11-14.
11. Barnes, Larry (27 March 1973). RUNOFF: A Program for the Preparation of Documents (PDF). Bitsavers' PDF Document Archive. Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. R-37. Retrieved 14 November 2008.
12. Raymond, Eric S. (ed.). "The Jargon Lexicon". The Jargon File. 4.4.7. ROFF which was in turn modeled after the Multics and CTSS program RUNOFF by Jerome Saltzer (that name came from the expression "to run off a copy").
13. Crisman, Patricia A., ed. (December 31, 1969). "The Compatible Time-Sharing System, A Programmer's Guide" (PDF). The M.I.T Computation Center. p. 504. Retrieved March 10, 2022.