From: utzoo!decvax!cca!cosell@Bbn-Unix@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Title: '\n' Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3151 Posted: Tue Sep 7 19:30:20 1982 Received: Wed Sep 8 03:16:07 1982 From: Bernie CosellDate: 5 Sep 1982 3:23:32 EDT (Sunday) In a recent revision of the ASCII standard (where `recent' probably means between five and ten years ago), `Newline' is a defined alternate meaning for'\12'. I haven't seen the real spec in a long time now, but as I recall they had the good sense to take all of the `standard' usages of various control chars and make them alternate meanings for the chars. (for example, I believe that the flow control functions of ^s and ^Q are now explicit). In some sense, this means that the VT100 folk got it wrong. The key on the vt100 that was clearly intended to carry the `newline' function sends 015 instead of 012. As I understand the spec you have two choices for `newline': 015-012 or just 012. DEC (and a lot of others, of course) mostly `made up' the convention of using 015 for newline. It hardly has a persuasive argument in favor of it beyond the largeness of the key on many terminals. [historical note: I believe that this `convention' came into being in the days of halfduplex model 33's: if you had the user use CR for the newline function, the system had merely to echo a LF and everything was fine. If you had the user use LF for newline, then the system had to echo CR RUBOUT, since it took a char of padding to do a CR, normally nmasked by the LF character (didn't you ever wonder why the sequence is CR-LF and not vice-versa?). I've fooled with such a scheme and I can report that the extra char is really a pain it can really upset you rhythm, dsuch as it can be on a 110 baud, noisy, mechanical kludge.] /Bernie