[TUHS] Line Terminators in Text Files [Was: Re: Why Pascal isNot My Favorite Programming Language - Unearthed!]

[TUHS] Line Terminators in Text Files [Was: Re: Why Pascal isNot My Favorite Programming Language - Unearthed!]

[Richard Tobin]

> As I recall, the original definition of ASCII suggested that the
> LF character was either "line feed" or "new line", and that if it
> *was* new-line, it would be stand-alone.

I have put a copy of the original ASCII standard (scanned images) at

  http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/ascii.tar

I don't remember where I got it from.

-- Richard

-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

[TUHS] Line Terminators in Text Files [Was: Re: Why Pascal isNot My Favorite Programming Language - Unearthed!]

[Random832]

On Mon, Sep 4, 2017, at 05:37, Richard Tobin wrote:
> > As I recall, the original definition of ASCII suggested that the
> > LF character was either "line feed" or "new line", and that if it
> > *was* new-line, it would be stand-alone.
> 
> I have put a copy of the original ASCII standard (scanned images) at
> 
>   http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/ascii.tar
> 
> I don't remember where I got it from.

I found the same document online at
http://www.worldpowersystems.com/J/codes/index.html

Incidentally, does anyone know anything about the 1961 DoD 8-bit
character set standard it refers to?

This does not appear to say anything about LF vs "Newline" (as either a
name or a function), though the 1986 version of ASCII deprecates it, so
was most likely acknowledged in versions between these in response to
practices on OSes such as Multics. ECMA-6:1973 acknowledges it, for
example (the fourth edition at
https://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-006-arch.htm).

[TUHS] Line Terminators in Text Files [Was: Re: Why Pascal isNot My Favorite Programming Language - Unearthed!]

[John Labovitz]

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On Sep 5, 2017, at 7:15 AM, Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> wrote:

> Incidentally, does anyone know anything about the 1961 DoD 8-bit
> character set standard it refers to?

I have a book here called _Coded Character Sets, History and Development_ (C.E. Mackenzie, 1980, Addison-Wesley) that is a wealth of info.

According to that book, the early 60s military codes were 7-bit, not 8-bit. Maybe Jennings is referring to a later standard?

The only reference I can find to a ‘DoD standard’ is this:

> During the early 1960s, a different kind of solution was tried in the Department of Defense. Recognizing that 42 graphics — 26 alphabetics, 10 numerics, and 6 specials (period, comma, slash, asterisk, minus sign, and dollar sign) — were common to all trains/chains, an edict was issued that only these 42 graphics could be used on reports. […] (p. 420)


—John

[TUHS] Line Terminators in Text Files [Was: Re: Why Pascal isNot My Favorite Programming Language - Unearthed!]

[Random832]

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On Tue, Sep 5, 2017, at 11:05, John Labovitz wrote:
> I have a book here called _Coded Character Sets, History and Development_
> (C.E. Mackenzie, 1980, Addison-Wesley) that is a wealth of info.
> 
> According to that book, the early 60s military codes were 7-bit, not
> 8-bit. Maybe Jennings is referring to a later standard?

Or maybe it was a 7-bit code with a parity bit and they're counting it
as 8-bit.

> The only reference I can find to a ‘DoD standard’ is this:
> 
> > During the early 1960s, a different kind of solution was tried in the Department of Defense. Recognizing that 42 graphics — 26 alphabetics, 10 numerics, and 6 specials (period, comma, slash, asterisk, minus sign, and dollar sign) — were common to all trains/chains, an edict was issued that only these 42 graphics could be used on reports. […] (p. 420)

I found a pre-ASCII standard proposal at
https://archive.org/details/enf-ascii-1961-09 that refers to
"MIL-STD-188A". Googling *that* finds stuff referring to Fieldata, so
that's probably what it's referring to. Fieldata does have a "Special"
control character immediately before DEL. And now that I check again,
the WPS page does say "For all intents and purposes "FIELDATA" today
refers to the character code. It, or a minor variant, is sometimes
called the "DoD standard 8-bit code".