From: utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!mcnc!taylor Newsgroups: net.dcom,net.misc Title: Re: How long is a break `character'\? Article-I.D.: mcnc.1307 Posted: Tue Sep 14 10:48:23 1982 Received: Wed Sep 15 04:43:56 1982 References: hpda.229 VERY interesting question. I checked my only 3 manufacterer-independent references (Doll's Data Communications, Martin's 'Tech. Aspects of Data Comm.", and McNamara's "Tech. Aspects of Data Comm." - Martin's is "Telecommunications and the Computer"), and could not even find a 'normal' break or interrupt defined! The 'long space' is pretty clearly defined for telco (modem) purposes as 1.5 to 4 seconds in various places, so the normal break must be much shorter. I've seen the range of 200 msec. in common usage, but I does not seem to be defined by either EIA or ANSI. I think that the two-character width definition is definitely unacceptable, and I can think of absolutely no basis for it (other than ease of terminal manufacturing.) I can think of several places it could cause problems. (For as close as I can find to an industry standard, the vt-100 Users Guide defines break as .2333 sec. +/- 10% and long break as 3.5 sec. +/- 10%. Page 37) Steve Taylor NC Educational Computing Service (919) 549-0671