wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher) (09/25/89)
The discussion on old 5 level machines reminds me of a story a retired ATT repairman told me. Because there was a chance that the machine could get sent into FIGS during the carriage return, one of the wire services (AP, I think, but I may have them swapped) mandated the sequence to be <CR><LF><LETTERS> on every line. The other one (UPI) did not; they used only <CR><LF>. As a result, their old-time copy editors got VERY good at reading the resulting 23.67 3;8:7 393 , and telling you what being sent without missing a beat. Flash! Murphy gets look and feel copyright on sendmail.cf {gatech!} wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (305) 255-RTFM
brian@ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor) (09/26/89)
Because the old 5-level Baudot machines were notorious for mechanical difficulties, there was an end-of-line sequence that became nearly universal. It was CR-CR-LF-LTRS-SPACE. It got to the point where I could practically type that as one fluid movement, and later I programmed it into some communications software that had to talk to the beasts. The reasoning was: Two CRs to make SURE that the carriage returned, since lots of the old machines would simply pile up letters on the right margin if it missed one - and that would mean that you'd miss a whole LINE of text. Also, if the carriage bar (the rod that the carriage slid on) had gotten dirty or the oil had gotten gummy (as it did every few months), the carriage would return very slowly which could lead to the next few characters printing backwards across the page. LF to advance the paper. It would have been more dependable to send two of these but we didn't want to waste paper. LTRS to make sure the machine was back in letters mode, and also to give the carriage just a little bit longer to get all the way to the left side of the paper. SPACE because the repair technicians didn't alway get the left travel stop adjusted properly and the first two letters on the left often piled up on top of each other, especially if the rubber bumper had swollen with age - or absorbed oil. - Brian