Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cbosgd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!cbosgd!mark From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: Re: FYI: underlining/highlighting in news articles Message-ID: <552@cbosgd.UUCP> Date: Mon, 3-Dec-84 11:19:05 EST Article-I.D.: cbosgd.552 Posted: Mon Dec 3 11:19:05 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 19:15:59 EST References: <> <1951@nsc.UUCP> Organization: Bell Labs, Columbus Lines: 23 I think Chuq misunderstands. We did indeed once have problems because of special purpose escape sequences embedded in news articles. Someone included the sequence that underlined text on a Concept 100, and that same sequence locked the keyboard on every HP terminal on the net that read the article. Many people were (quite justifiably) unhappy. Shortly thereafter, code was put into inews to refuse to pass any but the most vanilla control characters. This is why you'll occasionally see a message like 'helo[Dlo' - somebody pressed the left arrow key on their keyboard instead of backspace, the left arrow sequence (often ESC [ D) was transmitted, and inews took out the dangerous ESC character. However, what Karl is posting is quite harmless - it just has backspaces in it. I don't know of any terminals that choke on backspaces (although some printers do bizarre things with them.) The underlining or reverse video you see is the result of your user interface (rn or vnews or more) doing the translation from _ BS char to underlined char. This translation is done on the machine where the news is being read, so it's done for the right terminal. Mark Horton