From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 12:19:05 +1100 Subject: [COFF] Fieldata characters (was: Comparative promptology) In-Reply-To: References: <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> <578c584e-0296-957f-955a-ccab0697560a@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20191031011905.GA68439@eureka.lemis.com> On Wednesday, 30 October 2019 at 9:19:20 +0100, COFF wrote: > Harald Arnesen writes: > >> Harald Arnesen [29.10.2019 11:30]: >>> Warner Losh [28.10.2019 20:57]: >>> >>>> "@  " was the TOPS-20 prompt. >>> >>> Also the Sintran (Norsk Data) prompt. >> >> btw, we used to call it "grisehale" ("pig's tail"). > > Not at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (now part of the Norwegian > University of Technology and Science). There, it was called "nabla", > because of the EXEC 8 operating system on UNIVAC mainframes, which used > the FIELDATA character set, and where the "Master Space" character, > (visually represented by nabla, which looks like an upside-down capital > delta: '???' if what you're reading this text on supports Unicode) was > used as a prefix character indicating an operating system command. I worked for and with UNIVAC for most of the 1970s and early 1980s, including on EXEC 8/OS 1100, and the master space (binary 0) was always represented by @, on punched cards, printouts, terminals and the documentation. I've just confirmed with my copy of UP-4040, dating from 1971. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fieldata#UNIVAC agrees, though it notes: Sometimes switched with Δ But that's a delta, not a nabla. Fieldata also had a Δ (code 04), and I have never seen this switch. FWIW, this was in Germany, where we called the @ a „Klammeraffe“ (originally a spider monkey). This wasn't limited to UNIVAC. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: