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The day Return became Enter (2023)

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Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#171

Post by rswail »

varjag wrote: post #93
rswail wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The use of TTYs for computing interfaces is very different to using them as teletypes on comms links. I thought the control characters for that sort of use were the DC1-4 characters? RS-485 uses polling but my understanding is that the characters for polling usually involve like "FF" (hex) and some sort of device ID. I just read a TTY model 28 manual about the stunt box and I didn't see anything specific about F…

TTY interfaces initially were teletypes on comms links.

Yes, but they were character based, not message based as being discussed.

The ones I used were ASR-33s on 20mA current loop interfaces.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#172

Post by rswail »

arp242 wrote: post #102
rswail wrote: post #49

It's a damn shame that the control characters for "Field Separator" (FS ASCII 28 decimal) and "Record Separator" (RS ASCII 30 decimal) weren't used instead of TAB and CR/LF. Then the whole CRLF vs CR vs LF for line endings in files would have been totally avoided, with CR returning the print-head/cursor to the left-most position (right-most on R-L languages) and LF literally moving the print-head/cursor down. The dri…

Editing a file like that with a text editor is a right pain. Inserting these characters isn't all that straight-forward, and everything will be on a single line. In theory RS could be treated as a newline, which will only add to the line ending confusion. I think this is one of those things that sounds kind of nice in principle, but where the real-world practicalities just don't work out.

The file editing is an I/O issue, not a character issue.

The I/O drivers could translate as necessary, that's the point of using an explicit character to mean "new line" as opposed to either "carriage return" or "line feed".

Effectively moving away from explicit carriage and paper controls to a character that was explicitly internal to mean to generate whatever carriage/paper controls were needed on output/editing etc.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#173

Post by rswail »

Borg3 wrote: post #91
rswail wrote: post #49

It's a damn shame that the control characters for "Field Separator" (FS ASCII 28 decimal) and "Record Separator" (RS ASCII 30 decimal) weren't used instead of TAB and CR/LF. Then the whole CRLF vs CR vs LF for line endings in files would have been totally avoided, with CR returning the print-head/cursor to the left-most position (right-most on R-L languages) and LF literally moving the print-head/cursor down. The dri…

But we do NOT need to setup CRLF translation at all? Who in his sane mind uses CRLF even under windows? All my source codes are in UNIX format (aka LF only) and I use it consistent under Windows, Cygwin and UNIX.. Why make your life harder?

I fully agree, but we're talking history here, before Unix existed.

The confusion about "LF" (Unix) vs "CR" (Apple) vs "CR/LF" (MS/DOS & Windows) is because we didn't have an explicit "Line End" character in 7-bit ASCII.

There was "EOT" (Ctrl-D/ASCII 4/EOF in Unix) , "ETX" (Ctrl-C/ASCII 3), and other characters that were used to mean other I/O, including ones that didn't match the ASCII definition like Ctrl-S/Ctrl-Q to stop/start I/O, and Ctrl-Z to mean EOF (MS/DOS & Windows).

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#174

Post by 1718627440 »

Pxtl wrote: post #140
kps wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of overloading and Tab, piling on the ‘next field’ function is an endless source of pain.

Need an "indent" key distinct from the "tab" key.

Yeah, maybe something that produces a fixed size space and you press it multiple times until your preferred indent.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#175

Post by 1718627440 »

saghm wrote: post #105
Borg3 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we do NOT need to setup CRLF translation at all? Who in his sane mind uses CRLF even under windows? All my source codes are in UNIX format (aka LF only) and I use it consistent under Windows, Cygwin and UNIX.. Why make your life harder?

I think the issue is that people don't make their own lives harder, but sometimes they make the lives of other people harder (often unintentionally). In my experience, the CRLF files I run into tend to come from developers who are only working in Windows and either aren't aware of the issue or don't particularly care to do anything about it. It isn't something I run into often when cloning a git repo, but having rece…

> I sometimes have less to configure to run an .exe on Linux than I do to start editing the source for it in a way that makes it easy for me to merge any new changes that happen upstream.

Are you doing anything more than calling dos2unix?

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#176

Post by 1718627440 »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #85
jama211 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if I should make a joke menubar program where every time you make a newline while typing it sounds a slide-ding noise! I might do that…

The "ding" is a bell that is mechanically activated when the carriage gets close to the end of the writeable area (in many typewriters, this is a moveable stop to account for variable paper width). So when one types, the bell alerts the typist to the need to return the carriage; typically you get quite a few characters after the bell, either to finish your word, or hyphenate. Which makes it ding-slide rather than sli…

As far as I remember it, the bell works on both sides, so you get ding, type..., slide-ding.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#177

Post by 1718627440 »

Pxtl wrote: post #139

It's funny how HTML p tags and instant messaging apps have kind of brought back the distinction between "return" and "enter" where generally "shift-enter" means simple line-break/return, while regular "enter" means "new paragraph" or "send message". Ive been finally learning a bit of Linux shell stuff and was disappointed when I realized that shells generally don't follow this paradigm unlike PowerShell consoles on W…

Yeah on the shell you need to type \ Enter

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#178

Post by Timwi »

pavlov wrote: post #149
chuckadams wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple keyboards don't use the ⇥ symbol anymore, it's just labeled "tab" now (and the labels are lowercase). At least on a US keyboard, possibly it's different for others. I still remember when the ⌘ key was "open apple".

I still call this key “omppu” in Finnish (meaning “apple”) because that’s what everyone called it in the 1990s when it still had the “open apple” legend. And young people look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them to press “omppu Z”… But it’s a hard habit to break. I don’t even know what the official name of the key is in Finnish.

It's komentonäppäin. Don't blame you for using the much shorter omppu!

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#179

Post by JdeBP »

abhinavk wrote: post #87
JdeBP wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an "Internet" keyboard, you already have a "Forward" key.

Or a 5-button mouse.

Not so much. In USB mice, in my experience, the buttons are usually manifested in import reports as actual button usages, not as keys.
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