TJ-2

Infobox Software
name = TJ-2



caption = Memo: "TJ-2: Type Justifying Program"
author = Peter Samson
developer =
released = May 1963
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operating system =
platform = PDP-1
language =
genre = Page layout
license =
website = [http://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/ PDP-1 Restoration Project]

Type Justifying Program called TJ-2 was published by Peter Samson in May 1963 and is thought to be the first page layout program. Although it lacks page numbers, headers and footers, TJ-2 is the first application software and word processor to offer all of the features needed to indent, center, word wrap, justify, and hyphenate text, to simulate tabs, and to create two columns, page breaks and margins.

Developed from earlier Samson programs, "Justify"cite web | title=Phil's PDP10 Miscellany Page | author=Budne, Phil | date=undated | url=http://www.ultimate.com/phil/pdp10/ | accessdate=2006-07-01] and "TJ-1"cite journal | author=Furuta, Richard | title=Important papers in the history of document preparation systems: basic sources | journal=Electronic Publishing, Volume 5 | date=March 1992 | pages=29] , TJ-2 was written for the PDP-1 that was donated to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1961 by Digital Equipment Corporation.

Taking English text as input, TJ-2 aligns left and right margins, justifying the output using white space and word hyphenation. Text is marked up with single lowercase characters combined with the PDP-1's overline character, carriage returns and internal concise codes. The computer's six toggle switches control the input and output devices, enable and disable hyphenation and stop the session. Words can be hyphenated with a light pen on the computer's CRT display and from the session's dictionary in memory. On-screen hyphenation has "SAVE" and "FORGET" commands and "", the undo.

Comments in the code were quoted thirty years later: "The ways of God are just and can be justified to man" [An allusion to or quotation of the lines from the opening invocation of Milton's "Paradise Lost," "What in me is dark Illumine/what is low raise and support;/That to the highth of this great Argument/I may assert th' Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men." [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext91/plboss10.txt] ] and "Girls [sic] who wear pants should be sure that the end justifies the jeans."cite newsgroup | title=Re: world's worst comment | author=Smith, Daniel P. B. | newsgroup=alt.folklore.computers | id=19170993f0fcb7bd | date=1995 | url=http://groups.google.com/group/alt.folklore.computers/msg/19170993f0fcb7bd | accessdate=2006-07-02]

The successors to TJ-2 include RUNOFF and TYPSET written in 1964 for the CTSS operating systemcite web | author=Saltzer, J. | title=CTSS Programmer's Guide | date=reissued 15 December 1966 | url=http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/AH.9.01.html | accessdate=2006-07-02] , runoff for Multics, and nroff and troff for Unix.cite newsgroup | title=Re: world's worst comment | author=Barger, Jorn | newsgroup=alt.folklore.computers | id=39676e0477d9c831 | date=5 June 1998 | url=http://groups.google.com/group/alt.folklore.computers/msg/39676e0477d9c831 | accessdate=2006-07-02]

ee also

* Desktop publishing
* Peter Samson
* Text editor
* Expensive Typewriter
* Colossal Typewriter
* TECO
* RUNOFF

Notes

References

* Transcription of the 1963 memo describing TJ-2, with annotations by Daniel P. B. Smith
*. Samson begins at 1:16.