obrien@aerospace.aero.org (Michael O'Brien) (01/08/88)
I recently had an interesting time browsing the Smalltalk-72 reference
manual. I had not previously realized that the language used to
have all sorts of non-standard characters, like a little Dynabook,
a "smiley-face" for a Pen (then called a "turtle"), a pointing
finger for a literal quote, etc.
I don't recall seeing any published reason why all those characters
disappeared by the time of Smalltalk-80. Was it just a matter of
hoping (someday) to port Smalltalk to more "normal" boxes? Those
characters had a certain panache which is lacking in the straight
ASCII form of the language as it now stands.
--
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Mike O'Brien
obrien@aerospace.aero.org
{sdcrdcf,trwrb}!aero!obrien