- RUNOFF
RUNOFF was the first
computer text formatting program to see significant use. It was written in1964 for the CTSS operating system byJerome H. Saltzer in MAD assembler.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 earliesttext 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 theroff andnroff document formatting programs ofUnix , and their descendants. It was also the ancestor of FORMAT for theIBM System/360 , and of course indirectly for every computerizedword processing system. The name is alleged to have come from the phrase at the time, "I'll run off a copy".References
*Jerome H. Saltzer, [http://mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/CC-244.html "TYPSET and RUNOFF: Memorandum editor and type-out commands"] (
MIT Computation Center CC-244,Project MAC MAC-M-193, Cambridge, 1964)
*Jerome H. Saltzer, [http://mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/AH.9.01.html "Manuscript typing and editing: TYPSET, RUNOFF"] (Section AH.9.01, CTSS Programmer's Guide, Project MAC, Cambridge, 1966)
*Jerome H. Saltzer, [http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/other/a/Saltzer/www/publications/PSN-40.html "Experimental Additions to the RUNOFF Command"] (Programming Staff Note 40, Project MAC, Cambridge, 1965)ee also
*
Expensive Typewriter
*Colossal Typewriter
* TECO
*TJ-2
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