tr problem

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sun, 2008-06-15 at 14:10 -0400, Thompson Freeman wrote:
> Not familiar with 'em', I was stuck on using 'SOS' on an overloaded 
> PDP-10. It might not have been the same 'nroff' but the name was the 
> same. I was at least subsidized to use the Calcomp drum plotter.

'em' (Editor for Mortals) was an extended version of 'ed' written by
George Coulouris at Queen Mary College, London. It had in-line
interactive editing! (just one line at a time, mind, no sense going
overboard). As using 'ed' has been compared to playing blindfold chess,
this was quite an advance for the mid-70's. George actually came up to
Edinburgh and installed it on our PDP 11/45 from a paper tape!

IIRC, the folklore has it that 'em' gave Bill Joy some ideas which he
used in 'ex' and then in 'vi'.

BTW I also suffered under SOS, and TECO. The horror, the horror ...

poc