CBS UNIX(tm) Manuals. (Was: Re: Prentice-Hall exclusive?)

[Wolf N. Paul]

In article <19558 at conexch.UUCP> root at conexch.UUCP (Larry Dighera) writes:
>So, have you found any place in the CBS manuals that states exactly which
>release they document?  Or, are we going to just take Mr. Rotow's word for
>it that they are pre-Release 3?
>
>It seems to me, that CBS deliberately omitted that information in an
>attempt to deceive potential purchasers of their (out dated?) product.

I shouldn't think so. The Manuals were edited and produced (up to typesetting)
by AT&T employees, and are copyrighted by AT&T.

I have a two-volume set of AT&T in-house System V manuals which also omit
any reference to a Release.

I think that this dates back to a time when "System V" was considered the
"version number" of an OS called "UNIX"; release-specific stuff belonged
in the Release Notes, not in the main manual.

Since then, AT&T has decided to make "UNIX System V" the official name, and
use the "Release" number as a version number (witness the proliferation of
sub-release numbers, i.e. V.3, V.3.1, V.3.2, etc. Thus the merged UNIX/XENIX
product, which should really be considered a new Version, becomes Release 3.2,
and the merged USG/BSD/SUNOS product will be Release 4, rather than a new
version.

So, I think this was just an oversight at a time when the release number was
not nearly as important as it has become now.
-- 
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