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From: pogran@CCQ.BBN.COM (Ken Pogran)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Berkeley (not Wollongong) telnet and new line processing
Message-ID: <8707221308.AA29050@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Wed, 22-Jul-87 08:27:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8707221308.AA29050
Posted: Wed Jul 22 08:27:01 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jul-87 04:18:56 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 27

John,

Your elucidation of the handling of line-termination characters
in TELNET is the best I've seen in a long time; congratulations!

On the other hand, it's unfortunate that after so many years it
still needs to be explained!

TELNET's careful handling of the various line-termination
possibilities is one of the "great compromises" of the relatively
early days of the ARPANET (the bit-serial 1822 interface,
accomodating computers with the bewildering array of word sizes
found in late '60s - early '70s machines, being another).  It
arose through the efforts of the IBM EBCDIC-newline-physical-
half-duplex, Multics LF-is-newline (from which UNIX got its idea
of newline) and various DEC (and other) you-CR-and-I'll-echo-the-LF
camps to develop something that would work for everyone and that
was easily converted at each end of the connection.  That
different systems STILL have different conventions (UNIX vs VMS,
for example) after all this time underscores the importance of
the TELNET ASCII compromise -- as well as the importance of
implementing it correctly.

Thanks, John, for your explanation.

Regards,
 Ken Pogran