Annotated Unix Magic Poster(unixmagic.net)

213 pointsby kaycebasquesanno scorso32 comments

https://unixmagic.net/

34 comments

schoenanno scorso

I think the spool with usr written on it most likely refers to the /usr/spool directory, where user mailboxes (and I think print jobs) were traditionally kept.

ozbonusanno scorso

There are two more paintings in this series: Unix Views and Unix Feuds. High quality scans of all three are available on the internet archive.

dfcanno scorso

https://archive.org/details/unix-magic

badc0ffeeanno scorso

Somehow I had never heard of/seen this before. It looks like a prog rock album cover or something.

Some old commands in there I haven't used in a long time (poke, uucp), or never used - I think the troff I know is actually the one in GWBASIC (tracing off).

DonHopkinsanno scorso

The TRS-80 has TROFF and TRON!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQoL_qpYbW0

More useful but not quite as magical as DECSYSTEM 10 and DECSYSTEM 20 BASIC's "LISTREVERSE" command!

https://web.archive.org/web/20210713130832/https://imgur.com...

Chalk one up for DEC and BASIC. What other programming languages support that feature, huh?

Now all you need is a COMEFROM and COMESUB and RUNREVERSE (or NUR) statements, and you can write reversible BASIC programs!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World

    DECSYSTEM 20 BASIC User's Guide: LISTREVERSE command

    LISTREVERSE
    LISTNHREVERSE

    LISTREVERSE and LISTNHREVERSE print the contents of the
    user's memory area in order of descending line numbers. 
    LISTREVERSE precedes the output with a heading,
    LISTNHREVERSE eliminates the heading.

    LISTREVERSE

    EQUIV             10:53                      13-NOV-75

    40    END
    35    PRINT "THE EQUIVALENT CURRENT IS",I, " AMPERES"
    25    I=E1/R
    10    INPUT R
    5     INPUT E1

    READY

http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-1...

http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-2...

Emacs should have an edit-reverse-mode!

Gibbon1anno scorso

I liked Rocky Mountain BASIC with it's nice string operations and first class matrix operations.

I think it had a sort function too. But can't remember.

jibalanno scorso

Much of the acceptance of UNIX at Bell Labs was due to its role as a typesetting system, with troff, eqn, and tbl commands. I worked for a UNIX support company (Interactive Systems Corporation) and our first customer was the U.S. Supreme Court because they deal with so many documents.

PopAlongKidanno scorso

When I first started using Unix in school in the early 1980s, at least a third of the time was using nroff/troff, tbl and eqn. Maybe another 20% playing rogue. The rest was used to become a vi/ex advanced user, writing csh and awk scripts, and learning C.

The article mentions the "t" in troff, but doesn't mention that "roff" was short for "run off". I forget what the "n" was for.

abetuskanno scorso

"New" roff [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nroff

liendolucasanno scorso

I would happily pay for a high quality print, but no idea where to get one from.

jiveturkeyanno scorso

https://jpmens.net/2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/

liendolucasanno scorso

Awesome, that looks like what I want. Thanks for sharing!

daleswansonanno scorso

I literally just had this printed, following that same blog post. Would recommend Whitewalls, it was a very high quality print. I got the 12x18 size, kind of regret not getting it bigger, but I didn't have the wall space.

aktuelanno scorso

If you open the image in a new tab you see that the resolution is good enough to order a print online from one of the countless print services.

righthandanno scorso

Or ask your local print shop to make a print.

[deleted]anno scorso

thinkingemoteanno scorso

#39 skull (dev/null) or daemon

To me it looks like monkey face or like a cats face, a lynx? There is a tap / spigot above but I don't think tap wasn't much of a unix thing back then?

edits:

https://github.com/drio/unixmagic/issues/13

> the top of head has an old time faucet handle and this might be referencing IO redirection (streams) as well as the stream of molten lava/magic brew.

psychoslaveanno scorso

#28, pwd, looks like a play on words with "powder" that you would put in a box.

ape4anno scorso

How about annotating the word "magic"? Of course there's /etc/magic that's used by the `file` command. By the way it identifies itself, doing `file /etc/magic` works.

dmazinanno scorso

This is amazing. Does anyone know how to get a physical copy?

probably_wronganno scorso

The Internet Archive offers a 32Mb PNG file. Download that one and take it to your local print shop.

https://archive.org/details/unix-magic-poster-gary-overcare-...

zelseanno scorso

They also have absurdly huge TIFFs of all 3 posters if folks are interested: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Gary+Overacre%...

dmazinanno scorso

Good idea, thanks!

darniranno scorso

One of the previous times this was posted, someone offered to print and ship them. I got a A2 sized canvas print. It hangs in my home office now.

jiveturkeyanno scorso

https://jpmens.net/2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/

grandiegoanno scorso

The #38 is controversial as noted. To me it represents the branching of Unix flavors, mostly derived from the AT&T and BSD versions (represented by the glasses.)

nine_kanno scorso

To me, the stuff that grows from a shell invocation must be a process tree.

tempodoxanno scorso

Quite. I felt reminded of Git but it did not exist yet in the 1980s.

k3vinwanno scorso

Interesting. When I look at this I see printed circuitry like you would find on a PCB. In which case it could represent the electrons flowing downwards into the processor which powers the shell. And the power source might be the wizard himself or his beard.

righthandanno scorso

The power source is the fire underneath the shell.

k3vinwanno scorso

Ahh. Good point! Perhaps a better analogy would be that the brain processing power is represented by the circuitry. I’d be curious to other interpretations for why it appears where it does.

[deleted]anno scorso

yazantapuzanno scorso

When i see the brick wall i think of the -Wall option in gcc.

schoenanno scorso

Hmmm, it could also be the wall(1) program, which was already a part of AT&T Unix!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_(Unix)