Technical writing history with ed and nroff 

Glad you enjoy it!

Thanks for sharing that! 🤩 There's a lot of great history with Unix for those who aren't afraid of using hte command line and understand how the tools work. You can do a lot of great tech writing with nroff. I grew up with DOS, but I learned about Unix (and then Linux) when I went to university. Back in those early days, Linux didn't have a desktop word processor - so if I didn't want to boot back into DOS to run a word processor, I figured out how to use the then-new groff to write class papers. I'm still fond of nroff for that reason.

When your terminal is a big roll of paper ... :-)

@@freedosproject Which is why I'm glad we no longer use teletypes.

I much prefer ML/1 which is similar to Ed but changes are atomIc so you never get unwanted clashes. I haven't tested ML/1 in FreeDos but it works fine in DosBox.. ☺️

@@anon_y_mousseed is comfy for quick notetaking :)

Thanks! I teach a tech writing tools class, and I like to include a demo of nroff and troff to show that "writing with tools" didn't just start with HTML.

Thanks! I try not to do too many of these "Unix throwback" videos, but this was a special video for an article. Had to share! ☺

@@freedosproject I love them, but I also really enjoy your others, too. I've been playing with FreeDOS on and off again for many years now. I appreciate it, and thank you!

Fair enough! I realized it was a bit of a repeat from the "Linux like original Unix" video, but I turned this into an article for Technically We Write (dot) Com, with the embedded video, so I needed something more targeted. But I'm glad you liked the macro definition! I wanted to bring something new to this video. I realized when I was recording this video that I *could* go on and on about writing in nroff (groff) and editing in ed. I hope I kept it short enough (and focused enough). :-)

@@freedosproject I would love to see everything you have to tell about using roff/nroff/groff and ed/vi. Maybe some stories you had from those good old days.

I use ed frequently if I just need to type out a quick file, like a demo HTML document to test something out. I don't need to fire up a full screen editor for that. ed does the job!

well... it wasn't intended for the IBM line printer on wide paper, it was intended for the Graphic Systems model C/A/T typesetter (later the Linotron 202). If you're actually interested in using troff your best bet is looking for used books from the 1980s on Unix typesetting.

Teletype terminals had a continuous roll of paper, but you could also load standard US Letter sheets. Early Unix had a command called *type* that would simulate "typing" a document onto separate US Letter sheets. It would print 66 lines from the input, then pause until the operator pressed Enter, then print another 66 lines, and so on. If you wanted to print on wide paper (which would be odd, but possible) that's just a matter of setting the number of columns with .ll (line length) and the left margin with .po (page offset).

*troff* was written for the C/A/T typesetter (the "t" stood for "typesetter") but *nroff* could print to any typewriter-like device, such as the Teletype.

@@ssl3546 I was trying to answer the question, "What computer, editor, and printer could I have used in 1975-1977 to write and print my PhD thesis."

@@freedosproject Thank you. As I mentioned I was thinking how I could have written my thesis in the pre-PC days. I wrote it longhand and paid a typist with a Selectric $4.00 -$5.00 (in 2023 dollars)/page to type it. UCLA had a PDP-10 for student use and of course an IBM 370. I have seen documents created with WYLBUR from the 1970s but don't know how they printed them.

I've done a few videos about installing FreeDOS in a virtual machine. Here's one video about installing FreeDOS with QEMU on Linux: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Se69XJWxwAc.html

Kind of depends on what you do with it. If you're editing a file on a system and don't need/want to bring it into an editor, you can use sed to edit a copy. I admit I don't use ed everyday, but it's kind of fun to use every once in a while for the "retro" feel. ☺

You won't be able to run Linux on a '286 because it was designed for '386 and above. But I recall there were some Unix-like systems for the '286. But these were not multitasking, or at least would have had very poor multitasking, due to limitations in the '286 CPU architecture. I think SystemV R2 was ported to the '282, and of course there's Xenix. I don't know what Linux distributions run on a real '386 system these days. That's a 32-bit CPU, and most modern Linux distributions aim for 64-bit CPUs. But I think Debian has a 32-bit distro, and that might work on a '386 unless they used optimizations that don't support the '386. I recommend you google "Linux on '386 in 2023" and see if you can find an article or "best of" list. For low-end Unix systems, I like running Linux on an inexpensive ARM system like the Raspberry Pi. If you want the "old-style Unix feel" then install a "server" distribution of Linux. I have a Raspberry Pi 3+ at home, and I run Fedora Server on it. Works great.

@@freedosproject Thank you for your answer. So, seems I have to provide more information about my target. I have some units of old machines. For example NEC PowerMate 286/12 and similar. In general I want to use it for teaching as example of "how ancient tech could do modern tasks". My primary target is to be able to run on them something like Python interpreter. I tried TinyCore, but I dont like its architecture. For example - every time it boots, it loading all packets and mounting as squashfs'es. Very inconvenient, unoptimal and time-eating way, on my opinion...

Hmmm.. interesting challenge! Unfortunately, I don't know of any modern, updated Unix or Unix-like systems for the '286. Although if your goal is to run Python on a '286, you can also run Python 2.4.2 for DOS. There's a download for it on the "Python Legacy" website. But I know that's quite old; 2.4.2 was released 2005 (current version is 3.12.1 from last week). I don't know what it takes to compile the latest (or at least a more recent) Python on DOS, sorry. On the "how legacy tech can run modern tasks" : I'm about to record a series of videos showing how DOS spreadsheets can do the same tasks as modern spreadsheets (although slightly differently in some cases - especially without AutoFill). So you can watch for those. ☺

@@freedosproject Alright, I checked them out, and two of them are 486s, it is a bit better :) As I remember, Python package was included in FreeDOS distribution. Could it do periodically updates from internet, like packages in linux?

Welcome to the channel! 🎉

I used SunOS on the Sun 3/50 workstations in my university computer lab. It was my first exposure to Unix. And that's what prompted me to try Linux. But in 1993, Linux didn't have any desktop apps (no word processor) so to write my class papers, I either had to reboot into DOS or I had to use the tools I had. I talked about it in another video, but I learned LaTeX to write my physics lab reports (equations). That cost $$ to print to the computer lab's laser printer, but worth it for the 3 or 4 lab reports every semester. I could use ghostscript on my Linux box to print LaTeX to my Epson FX80 dot matrix printer - but that took *forever* to print. Not worth it for regular class papers. So if it was just a class paper (like for an English class) I would write that in nroff and print the text on a dot matrix printer. And in the campus computer lab, we had a big line printer and a regular dot matrix printer (I think Okidata). You could print to the dot matrix for free, if you didn't tie it up with long print jobs (like printing in graphics mode). My workaround: write a document in nroff, and print it to the dot matrix printer. You get bold and underline, which was enough for my class papers. It was free and didn't use up my paper and ribbon at home. ☺

@@freedosproject In my last job I was using groff on a monthly basis to keep a set of PDF templates up to date. Instead of dinking around with Word for an hour each time and letting small inconsistencies accumulate, groff let me do it in seconds. troff/groff are still very useful tools