A report on TYPSET and RUNOFF, Compatible Time-Sharing System and Multics

The original RUNOFF type-setting program for CTSS was written by Jerome H. Saltzer circa 1964.

Morris and McIlroy then moved the BCPL version to Multics when the IBM 7094 on which CTSS ran was being shut down.

CTSS had one of the first computerized text editing and formatting utilities, called TYPSET and RUNOFF (the successors of MEMO, MODIFY and DITTO).

MIT Computation Center staff member Louis Pouzin created for CTSS a command called RUNCOM, which executed a list of commands contained in a file. RUNCOM also provided for parameter substitution. He later created a design for the Multics shell that was implemented by Glenda Schroeder which in turn inspired Unix shell scripts.

runoff (rf)

Dennis Ritchie wrote that the design of UNIX was influenced by CTSS