Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those green sheets. In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over thine head... These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. What're other bods' experiences? [*] Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off at Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. -- Dave, bored at home
[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1564 bytes --] Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they specifically went through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark up and being very careful to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times. I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I still slash my 7. IDK why I stopped the one and not the other. A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away. David > On Apr 13, 2020, at 2:01 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote: > > Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those green sheets. > > In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over thine head... > > These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. > > What're other bods' experiences? > > [*] > Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off at Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. > > -- Dave, bored at home > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2521 bytes --] FWIW -- I still slash both zeros and sevens. I was probably 12 when I was taught that trick, plus the print head of an ASR33 slashed zero's and 1, l, 7 were all distinct. So sat the time, it seemed cool and advanced. Then it just became a habit, and as we know, old habits are difficult to change and frankly, I never saw the reason to stop. My handwriting is a bit of a mess as it is, so anything I do the make it clear has always been considered a good thing by people around me.🤔 On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 7:31 AM David Barto <david at kdbarto.org> wrote: > Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they specifically went > through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark up and being very careful > to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times. I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I > still slash my 7. IDK why I stopped the one and not the other. > > A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away. > > David > > > On Apr 13, 2020, at 2:01 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote: > > > > Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned > supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the > glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and > Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the hots for > one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those green sheets. > > > > In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in > order to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* > slashed your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box > over thine head... > > > > These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise > an eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. > > > > What're other bods' experiences? > > > > [*] > > Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off > at Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. > > > > -- Dave, bored at home > > _______________________________________________ > > COFF mailing list > > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20200413/c2bc2825/attachment.html>
My first exposure to computing was 8-bit computers, I was 9 or 10 years old. I typed in countless BASIC programs from magazines and they used a slashed zero, so naturally I picked it up and started using it in math class. I explained to the teacher that it was a "computer thing" and she let me continue doing it. I eventually stopped slashing my zeros about 10 years later except when writing programs longhand. I was taught to write '1' with a serif and '7' with a short crossbar, and I still do to this day. I also write an open '4' similar to the one on 7-segment displays, except with the horizontal stroke extending slightly past the vertical. When I started teaching math, I got into the habit of horizontally slashing 'Z' on the blackboard but not on paper. Speaking of which, how do y'all represent a space character in writing? I had a comp. sci teacher who would use a slashed 'b' character, but I never liked that (too big, hard to distinguish from normal letters). I prefer using something like character U+2423, a short straight bracket lying on its back on the baseline. Tangentially related, I remember when I started learning about computers that almost everyone used a hyphen between a modifier and the character: you'd write "Control-C" or "Shift-6". Then something changed and how it seems more common to use a '+' character and write it "Control+C". Wikipedia's article for "Control-C" uses the hyphen in the title but the plus sign in the article itself. Any idea why it changed? P.
'Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls...' I slash both zeros and sevens too. With regards to the zero I learned it at the university in the 70ths, however I believe that slashing sevens I learned already in the school days(60ths) or even at home by my parents (50ths).
On 13/04/2020, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned
> supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find
> the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars
> and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the
> hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those
> green sheets.
>
> In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order
> to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF?
I have always seen a slashed 7 and Z in European writing (along with
exaggerated serifs on Wons).
For zeroes and oscars, I dimly recall -- or possibly hallucinate --
that some primeval standard specified putting a tail on oscar and
leaving zero alone. A bit of searching turned up nothing, though.
N.
[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 867 bytes --] On 13 Apr 2020 09:23 -0400, from cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo): > For zeroes and oscars, I dimly recall -- or possibly hallucinate -- > that some primeval standard specified putting a tail on oscar and > leaving zero alone. A bit of searching turned up nothing, though. The original Palm Pilot "Graffiti" alphabet, designed to use single-stroke for all unaccented characters, had O (oh) and 0 (zero) both as plain circles drawn counterclockwise starting at the top (separated into different drawing areas so the OS would know which you intended), but Q was drawn as an O with a short tail to the right at the end. Might that possibly be what you're recalling? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS) -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”
[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2156 bytes --] Showing the usefulness of that, back around 1985 I was in a training session at Unisys and the instructor told us about his time as a programmer in Vietnam during wartime. He was part of a group that modified software for artillery fire control systems in the field, and each time one of the soldier programmers got orders to return home he would leave an easter egg in the code. A few days later a message might pop up saying, "Drinking a beer at home watching tv, wish you were here??" or little things along those lines. The instructor said one guy, however, went into the code and globally replaced variable names with combinations of 1, l, 0, O. Since the 1/l and 0/O were displayed identically, the programmers didn't find the prank funny. Our instructor said as he traveled the US training groups, he hoped he would find the guy. 10 or 15 years later he was still more than a tad angry. All for lack of slashes and serifs. Incidentally, living in Austria I was surprised to see ones commonly written looking nearly like upside down Vs. Mike Markowski On 4/13/20 8:38 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > FWIW -- I still slash both zeros and sevens. I was probably 12 when I > was taught that trick, plus the print head of an ASR33 slashed zero's > and 1, l, 7 were all distinct. So sat the time, it seemed cool and > advanced. Then it just became a habit, and as we know, old habits are > difficult to change and frankly, I never saw the reason to stop. My > handwriting is a bit of a mess as it is, so anything I do the make it > clear has always been considered a good thing by people around me.🤔 > > On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 7:31 AM David Barto <david at kdbarto.org > <mailto:david at kdbarto.org>> wrote: > > Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they > specifically went through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark > up and being very careful to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times. > I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I still slash my 7. IDK why I > stopped the one and not the other. > > A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away. > > David
On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 6:53 AM Paul Guertin <paul at guertin.net> wrote: > Tangentially related, I remember when I started learning > about computers that almost everyone used a hyphen between > a modifier and the character: you'd write "Control-C" or > "Shift-6". Then something changed and how it seems more > common to use a '+' character and write it "Control+C". > Wikipedia's article for "Control-C" uses the hyphen in the > title but the plus sign in the article itself. Any idea > why it changed? > Because it was always wrong by a strict interpretation of the hyphenation rules of English. In English, one can say "I have anal-retentive tendencies" (with a hyphen) but also "I am anal retentive" (without). Both of these phrases are correct because when two or more words are used to modify a noun that follows, they are hyphenated, otherwise they are not. So phrases like "the control-c character" or "the control-v sequence" are correct, but it should be "hit control c to abort" (without a hyphen) by this rule. However, that's not the full story. When you are telling a user to hit "control c" in a technical manual, when you hyphenate it carries a connotation to many readers (mostly non-technical ones) to press the control key, release it and then do the same with 'c', which as we all know won't work. "Conrol+c" however connotes to many doing both at the same time, so that convention was adopted to avoid the confusion about what '-' means and dodge the rather tricky hyphenation rules (which I've stated only in brief, btw). So this convention shifted as computers became more mainstream. Warner P.S. Yes, I know that firetruck used to be fire-truck and it was always hyphenated for a time, even when not used in a phrase like 'fire-truck company'. That's one of the exceptions, and Control-C also fell under that convention. But technical writers started to evolve it to '+' in maybe the 90s to help convey the notion of both at the same time.... and coincidentally to avoid silly arguments about convention vs "the rules" that made things more confusing, not less. P.P.S. I don't have a good source to this other than second-hand recollection of my wife who used to do technical writing in the 90s, and half-remembered usenet flame wars. The English rule, though, can be found in any style manual, and is direct from a former English professor (also my wife). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20200413/90f42ddc/attachment.html>
'Since the 1/l and 0/O were displayed identically, the programmers didn't find the prank funny. Our instructor said as he traveled the US training groups, he hoped he would find the guy. 10 or 15 years later he was still more than a tad angry. All for lack of slashes and serifs.' the 1/l/i confusion was a real problem in those days when I saw numberless frustrated programmers whose programs did anything but the expected.
On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 8:22 AM Thomas Paulsen <thomas.paulsen at firemail.de> wrote: > 'Since the 1/l and 0/O were displayed > identically, the programmers didn't find the prank funny. Our > instructor said as he traveled the US training groups, he hoped he would > find the guy. 10 or 15 years later he was still more than a tad angry. > All for lack of slashes and serifs.' > > the 1/l/i confusion was a real problem in those days when I saw numberless > frustrated programmers whose programs did anything but the expected. > There's many obfuscation tools for 'C' that existed back in the day which did the above automatically. I've had the displeasure to debug code run through that for which the original source has been lost... "Pleasure" ... right. I'll go with that since this is still polite company. Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20200413/73fb45e5/attachment.html>
Remember I learned slashing my zeroes, small bar in sevens and zets, curly letter X. This was when a studied Mathematics fro a while at the University of Technology in Delft, the Netherlands.. I think it had to do with avoiding misunderstandings in scribbled formulars in a time we still did a lot of real writing semester papers. This was around mid-70tish for me.
[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2062 bytes --] I slash my 0's, but that's it, having always had TECO on a PDP-10 with an LA36 to start with. I remember a lot of my math teachers that had ZERO experience with a computer marking up things as you describe. Z, 7, 0 (zero), etc. Maybe mathematical formulas were the origin? ak On 4/13/2020 7:30 AM, David Barto wrote: > Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they specifically went through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark up and being very careful to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times. I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I still slash my 7. IDK why I stopped the one and not the other. > > A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away. > > David > >> On Apr 13, 2020, at 2:01 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote: >> >> Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those green sheets. >> >> In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over thine head... >> >> These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. >> >> What're other bods' experiences? >> >> [*] >> Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off at Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. >> >> -- Dave, bored at home >> _______________________________________________ >> COFF mailing list >> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org >> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff >
[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 610 bytes --] On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 11:29:07AM -0400, Arthur Krewat wrote: >I slash my 0's, but that's it, having always had TECO on a PDP-10 >with an LA36 to start with. > >I remember a lot of my math teachers that had ZERO experience with a >computer marking up things as you describe. Z, 7, 0 (zero), etc. >Maybe mathematical formulas were the origin? > When I was a student, I once cheated during an exam (I know, I'm ashamed) by giving the answer to my neighbor and friend: I gave him the good answer, which was a "0" (zero). My friend got a bad grade, since he read "ø", the symbol for "empty set". Pierre
Dixit Nemo (2020-04-13 9:23 a.m.):
> European writing (along with exaggerated serifs on Wons).
I would love to see a study correlating the serif length on 1
with both the age of the writer and the place he or she learned
to write. Most Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some
of them write normal serifs, others go full CVS receipt and
end up with serifs longer than the character they're seriffing.
P.
On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, Paul Guertin wrote:
> I would love to see a study correlating the serif length on 1 with both
> the age of the writer and the place he or she learned to write. Most
> Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some of them write normal
> serifs, others go full CVS receipt and end up with serifs longer than
> the character they're seriffing.
I (English-born, Aussie-bred) use s short serif and underline on the "1".
Hmmm... My MacBook puts a dot in the middle of the "0" (zero) and
serifs/underlines the "1" too.
I make spaces visible with a sort of a musical "flat" symbol but with a
short bar through it, write a tab as a short right arrow, and for me it's
always ^C etc (which is how they're echoed).
Part of my background is formal message-passing in emergency
communications, whereby the written message *must* be correct as that will
what will be sent (even spelling and grammatical errors, which used to
irritate me although I am allowed to query the author).
Ahhh... The Tower of Babel when it comes to something that must by
definition be precise :-)
-- Dave (VK2KFU)
[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 599 bytes --] Since it's COFF, I replaced to the list. On 4/13/2020 1:35 PM, Paul Guertin wrote: > Dixit Nemo (2020-04-13 9:23 a.m.): >> European writing (along with exaggerated serifs on Wons). > > I would love to see a study correlating the serif length on 1 > with both the age of the writer and the place he or she learned > to write. Most Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some > of them write normal serifs, others go full CVS receipt and > end up with serifs longer than the character they're seriffing. 20 years from now, no one will get the CVS reference without searching for it :) ak
On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> 20 years from now, no one will get the CVS reference without searching
> for it :)
And here I was wondering what "Concurrent Versions System" had to do with
it...
The kindest thing that I could say about SCCS was that it solved the
problem at the time, and I was glad when RCS came along; I don't like GIT.
-- Dave, with a strong interest in BitKeeper
[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2010 bytes --] On Monday, 13 April 2020 at 19:01:13 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order > to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed > your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over > thine head... > > These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an > eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. > > What're other bods' experiences? It's funny that nobody seems to have differentiated these usages. I've seen at least three: 1. "European" characters: 1 with a serif (is that really the correct term?), 7 with a stroke, Z also with a stroke. Also small u with a stroke above it in German, left over from the days (âSütterlinschriftâ) when this was the only distinction between written u and n. None of these had anything to do with computers. 2. The distinction between O and 0. Put a cross through the 0 and leave the O as it was. In my experience, this too predated computers: I first learnt it round 1963 when trying to become a radio amateur, much to the disgust of my maths teacher, who also didn't like the hooked 1s and the crossed 7s. 3. The distinction between O and 0. The same as before, almost: put a cross through the O and leave the 0 normal. This must be a US usage, since O and à are both valid (and different) letters in some Nordic languages. 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: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20200414/993fa3c5/attachment.sig>
Did anyone ever find a font with these characters? Preferably one I can use with TeX. Thanks On Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:01 AM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org wrote: > Way back then, when dinosaurs strode the earth and System/360 reigned > supreme, we were taught to slash our zeros and sevens (can't quite find > the glyphs for them right now) in order to distinguish them from Oscars > and Ones for the benefit of the keypunch girls (yes, really; I had the > hots for one of them at one time, but someone else took her) on those > green sheets. > > In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order > to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF? And you *never* slashed > your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over > thine head... > > These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an > eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*]. > > What're other bods' experiences? > > [*] > Don't even mention Redfern, OK? Just don't... And as for getting off at > Redfern, well, I did a few times when I had a contract job around there. > > -- Dave, bored at home > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20200413/551ea2c3/attachment.html>
On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 08:09:21AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, Paul Guertin wrote: > > > I would love to see a study correlating the serif length on 1 with both > > the age of the writer and the place he or she learned to write. Most > > Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some of them write normal > > serifs, others go full CVS receipt and end up with serifs longer than > > the character they're seriffing. I (raised in England), in my early 50s: draw a 1 as simply a vertical stroke, no serifs draw a 7 without any bar, but did see that being used by some while in middle school draw an 4 'open', rather than 'closed' draw 0 variably depending upon context A 0 usually without slash, occasionaly with a slash when writing code or it would otherwise be ambiguous (licence codes, etc). We tended to view the stroked 7 as a Continental practice, but some people adopted it. As to your question about spaces, I do it as Paul described - a short of shallow bucket. > I (English-born, Aussie-bred) use s short serif and underline on the "1". Aha - so you were pulling our legs with your phrasing of the subject. DF
> > the age of the writer and the place he or she learned to write. Most
> > Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some of them write normal
> > serifs, others go full CVS receipt and end up with serifs longer than
> > the character they're seriffing.
>
> I (raised in England), in my early 50s:
> draw a 1 as simply a vertical stroke, no serifs
> draw a 7 without any bar, but did see that being used by some while in
> middle school
I (a Scot) draw a 1 with a serif and a 7 with a bar (and a Z with a bar)
because it was necessary for university maths not to mix up |, 1, 7, 2 and
Z, and the habit has just stuck. Mathematicians, of course, have lots of
other ways to decorate their fonts.
And I write zero with a slash and O without when clarity requires it (e.g.
copying down serial numbers) and sometimes at other "computing" times too,
though not consistently, because it helped the card-punch-operator.
I did have a summer job as a student at a place which did the 0 and O
the other way round, which caused a bit of confusion at first. I don't
know why, because it wasn't the kind of place which would have been
contrary about something like that. Given that I got the job because the
person I was working for didn't understand IMPLICIT INTEGER and couldn't
see why his FORTRAN wasn't giving him the results he expected, my guess is
that it was just a case of someone hearing about a good idea and just
implementing it in their own way.
--
George D M Ross MSc PhD CEng MBCS CITP
University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics,
Appleton Tower, 11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH8 9LE
Mail: gdmr at inf.ed.ac.uk Voice: 0131 650 5147
PGP: 1024D/AD758CC5 B91E D430 1E0D 5883 EF6A 426C B676 5C2B AD75 8CC5
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.