 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group UNIX or Unix, Web or web? Major Keary |
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Unix
Not so long ago ordinary computer users rarely heard the name, Unix. Greatly improved inter-platform
operability, and the Internet, has changed that. Now we are all used to hearing about Unix boxes, Linux
servers, and so on.
A change is taking place in the way 'UNIX' is typeset; it is becoming commonly printed as Unix. But
first a little background on the name.
The need for a multi-user operating system with lots of processing power and plenty of room for the storage
of data led to a project being established in 1965 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and
General Electric (GEC). The new operating systems was to be called MULTICS, which stood for Multiplexed
Information and Computer Service. Bell Laboratories took an interest, but withdrew in 1969 when it became
apparent that the concept was still in gestation, with every indication that the infant MULTICS may not be
born for quite a long time - if ever.
People at Bell who had worked on the MULTICS project began developing a file system; it was undertaken for
various reasons, one of which was to enable them play a space-travel game! One thing led to another and in
1971 the first edition of UNIX was published. Brian Kernighan had called it, Uniplexed Information and
Computing System(UNICS), by way of a humorous play on the name of the moribund MULTICS. UNICS quickly
became UNIX.
Kernighan is well-known as one of the authors of the standard reference on the C language; the other,
Desmond Ritchie, was the original designer of C and one of the creators of Unix.
As a matter of interest, the first port of Unix was achieved at the University of Wollongong in 1977, and in
the same year some of the first documentation was published by John Lions of the University of New South
Wales. A fascinating genealogical history of Unix is contained in Goodheart and Cox: The Magic
Garden Explained (1994). In a foreword John Mashey (who began working at Bell Labs in 1973 when Unix was
still in its infancy and who later became part of Silicon Graphics), writes: "There has long been a somewhat
mysterious connection between the UNIX system and the folks Down Under. For whatever reason there were often
Australian computer scientists around Bell Labs, or doing interesting things with the UNIX system very far
away. A bit later came John Lions' wonderful booklets explaining the innards of ... [UNIX] ...".
Until recently Unix was generally rendered in upper case. The Unix form has been in use for over five years:
the authoritative Encyclopedia of Computer Science uses 'Unix' in body text; it is also used in Wired Style
(1996) - a style manual for the editors of Wired), and in recent titles published by O'Reilly (whose books
are a benchmark of typographical excellence).
So, why the change? The original acronym, UNICS, was never meant to be taken seriously, and its conversion
to UNIX - regardless of origin - set it apart as a name in its own right. There may be patents or copyrighted
trade names that use the full force of the majuscule form, but Unix has become a generic name for an
operating system that takes many forms and just as many trade names. The all-caps spelling is no longer
appropriate for general references to Unix and, in my opinion, should be used in only those instances where a
particular form is called for by a proprietary name. Apart from that, Unix looks better and is easier to
type.
Web or web?
A similar thing is happening in respect of the World Wide Web, which has been contracted to the Web. A
distinction is being drawn between what has become a proper noun, Web (as in The Web)
and the descriptive term, web, as in web site, web browser, web pages, and so
on.
I am in favour of the use of web when one is writing about web sites, web pages, etc. Using the word -
which it has become - with a capital W when writing about a web site (or website, as seems to
becoming common usage) is a bit pompous. As early as 1994 the capital W was being dropped, even in the proper
noun form.
That kind of change has also occurred in many Internet terms; for example, what was originally written as
Electronic Mail later became E-mail, then e-mail, and is now more commonly rendered as
email. I'm not sure how email gets on in German, where all nouns are capitalised; my recollection is that
Email is their word for enamel, which could be a bit confusing.
The Internet still retains its capital I, regardless of how it is used. Forms, such as
intranet and extranet are commonly rendered without a capital letter, so who knows what might
happen to Internet.
Reprinted from the April 2001 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
