Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Don Hopkins]

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Decades ago I made my prompt simply end with a newline, which perfectly and cleanly solves the problem of making it easy to copy and paste a whole line by multiple clicking in a terminal emulator to select the line, or by using line oriented commands in an emacs shell (or moving to the line and hitting return, which Emacs often regularly fucks up with its idiotic kludges to identify the prompt with invisible marks and regular expressions), without injecting any garbage characters into the beginning of the command line or requiring any extra mouse clicks, precision cursor targeting, or extra keystrokes.

Using “;” or any other character as a prompt is an ugly hack, and doesn’t solve the problem thoroughly or cleanly. No matter what character you use as a prompt at the beginning of the line, it’s going to cause some problems, like semicolons building up each time you re-enter the line, or conflicts with built-in shell syntax (retch!), so the only logical (and most obvious) solution is not to use any characters at the beginning of the line at all, and just put the prompt on a line above on its own. There is no downside to that, unless it somehow offends your sense of aesthetics. (In which case you should get over it.) 

That’s the cleanest solution without any unpleasant side effects. I don’t understand why that solution isn’t the first thing shell users think of, and the default used by the shell — it’s so obvious. Maybe because people used to the shell are just so accustomed to having to deal with mashing together unpleasant hackey kludgy incompatible competing ad-hoc syntax that it would never occur to them that it’s possible to solve a problem by REMOVING punctuation and noise characters instead of ADDING more of them. 

-Don


> On 8 Aug 2018, at 04:00, tuhs-request@minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Michael Kjörling)
>   2. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Kurt H Maier)
>   3. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (arnold@skeeve.com)
>   4. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Bakul Shah)
>   5. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Michael Kjörling)
>   6. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Dave Horsfall)
>   7. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (KatolaZ)
>   8. Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 5 (Steve Johnson)
>   9. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Tony Finch)
>  10. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Pete Turnbull)
>  11. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Doug McIlroy)
>  12. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Brian Zick)
>  13. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (John P. Linderman)
>  14. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Lyndon Nerenberg)
>  15. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Cág)
>  16. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (arnold@skeeve.com)
>  17. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Cág)
>  18. Re: Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > # (Brian Zick)
> 
> From: Michael Kjörling <michael@kjorling.se>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 08:54:54 CEST
> To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> On 6 Aug 2018 21:53 +0100, from brian@zick.io (Brian Zick):
>> rc uses ;
> 
> Not sure what came first, and not up to digging out the history books,
> but these days, a plain `;` for a prompt has a distinct advantage in
> that you can copy the whole line and paste it into another shell, and
> the shell will do The Right Thing (tm) as long as (as is, I believe,
> done by all of the major shells at least) it uses `;` for command
> separation.
> 
> -- 
> Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael@kjorling.se
>  “The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person
>              is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 09:31:36 CEST
> To: Brian Zick <brian@zick.io>
> Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> On Mon, Aug 06, 2018 at 09:53:33PM +0100, Brian Zick wrote:
>> 
>> rc uses ;
> 
> Does it?  10th edition Unix and Plan 9 rc both have ('% ' ' ') as the   
> default value of $prompt.  At least that's how it's described in the
> manual.  None of the v8/9/10 tarballs in the archive contain rc code,
> but some contain manual source, and those describe % prompts.
> 
> I've seen other references to ; (presumably  ('; ' ' ')) as the rc 
> prompt but I've never seen it in the wild.  Does anyone here know what 
> the story is?
> 
> khm
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: arnold@skeeve.com
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 09:50:21 CEST
> To: khm@sciops.net, brian@zick.io
> Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Aug 06, 2018 at 09:53:33PM +0100, Brian Zick wrote:
>>> 
>>> rc uses ;
>> 
>> Does it?  10th edition Unix and Plan 9 rc both have ('% ' ' ') as the   
>> default value of $prompt.  At least that's how it's described in the
>> manual.  None of the v8/9/10 tarballs in the archive contain rc code,
>> but some contain manual source, and those describe % prompts.
>> 
>> I've seen other references to ; (presumably  ('; ' ' ')) as the rc 
>> prompt but I've never seen it in the wild.  Does anyone here know what 
>> the story is?
>> 
>> khm
> 
> I believe that Tom Duff's rc does indeed use ('% ' ' '). But I think that
> Byron Rakitsis's version changed the default to ('; ' ' ') exactly for
> the reason that it's copyable/pastable.
> 
> HTH,
> 
> Arnold
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 09:57:11 CEST
> To: Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>
> Cc: Brian Zick <brian@zick.io>, tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> On Tue, 07 Aug 2018 00:31:36 -0700 Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 06, 2018 at 09:53:33PM +0100, Brian Zick wrote:
>>> 
>>> rc uses ;
>> 
>> Does it?  10th edition Unix and Plan 9 rc both have ('% ' ' ') as the   
>> default value of $prompt.  At least that's how it's described in the
>> manual.  None of the v8/9/10 tarballs in the archive contain rc code,
>> but some contain manual source, and those describe % prompts.
>> 
>> I've seen other references to ; (presumably  ('; ' ' ')) as the rc 
>> prompt but I've never seen it in the wild.  Does anyone here know what 
>> the story is?
> 
> The es shell (by Haar and Rakitzis) used ; - the reason (as
> per the man page)is that a user can cut-n-paste a previous
> line to rexecute it (for the same reason people use term% and
> cpu% functions to execute their args).  Es syntax was derived
> from rc, which may be why the confusion.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Michael Kjörling <michael@kjorling.se>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 10:02:56 CEST
> To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> On 7 Aug 2018 06:54 +0000, from michael@kjorling.se (Michael Kjörling):
>> the shell will do The Right Thing (tm)
> 
> I suspect I must stand corrected on this. Turns out that at least GNU
> bash 4.4.12(1) seems to not like a `;` at the beginning of the command
> line.
> 
>    $ /bin/bash --version | head -n1
>    GNU bash, version 4.4.12(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
>    $ /bin/bash
>    $ ; true
>    bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;'
>    $ echo $?
>    2
>    $
> 
> Hopefully other shells are more sane.
> 
> -- 
> Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael@kjorling.se
>  “The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person
>              is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 10:23:37 CEST
> To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
> 
> 
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2018, Michael Kjörling wrote:
> 
>> Hopefully other shells are more sane.
> 
> The MacBook here runs GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin16) and is equally busted, as is plain "sh" on both the Mac and FreeBSD (I can't be bothered checking the Penguin); I use ZSH on FreeBSD and it does The Right Thing (tm), as does ZSH on the Mac.
> 
> -- Dave
> 
> 
> From: KatolaZ <katolaz@freaknet.org>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 10:37:23 CEST
> To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 07, 2018 at 06:23:37PM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> On Tue, 7 Aug 2018, Michael Kjörling wrote:
>> 
>>> Hopefully other shells are more sane.
>> 
>> The MacBook here runs GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release
>> (x86_64-apple-darwin16) and is equally busted, as is plain "sh" on both the
>> Mac and FreeBSD (I can't be bothered checking the Penguin); I use ZSH on
>> FreeBSD and it does The Right Thing (tm), as does ZSH on the Mac.
>> 
>> -- Dave
> 
> I have tried all the shells I have on my linux box. It turns out that
> only ksh and zsh like a ";" at the beginning of the line. Otherwise,
> bash, busybox, ash/dash, mksk, posh, and yash can't bear it.
> 
> I really don't see the point of using ";", especially if you need to
> make it clear if a command needs to be run by root.
> 
> $ ;-P
> sh: 1: Syntax error: ";" unexpected
> 
> 
> -- 
> [ ~.,_  Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - Devuan -- Freaknet Medialab  ]  
> [     "+.  katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it  ]
> [       @)   http://kalos.mine.nu ---  Devuan GNU + Linux User  ]
> [     @@)  http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia --  GPG: 0B5F062F  ] 
> [ (@@@)  Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ  ]
> 
> 
> 
> From: "Steve Johnson" <scj@yaccman.com>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 5
> Date: 6 August 2018 at 23:19:31 CEST
> To: "Hellwig Geisse" <hellwig.geisse@mni.thm.de>, tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> I take a somewhat more relaxed view of what a spec should be:
> It should describe a program with enough completeness that a competent
> programmer could write it from the spec alone.
> Each section of the spec should be capable of being tested.
> If all the tests for all the sections pass, then the program is ready
> for general use.
> 
> The formal systems I have seen would roll over and die when presented with
> even a simple compiler.  Additionally, being able to specify that a particular
> function be carried out by a heapsort, for example, would require that the
> formalism could describe the heapsort and prove it correct.  These don't
> grow on trees...
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hellwig Geisse" <hellwig.geisse@mni.thm.de>
> To:<tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
> Cc:
> Sent:Mon, 06 Aug 2018 18:30:30 +0200
> Subject:Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 5
> 
> 
> On Mo, 2018-08-06 at 08:52 -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
> > 
> > What counts as a "formal spec"? Is it like Justice Potter Stewart's
> > "I know it when I see it" definition or something better?
> > 
> 
> For me, a "formal spec" should serve two goals:
> 1) You can reason about the thing that is specified.
> 2) The spec can be "executed" (i.e., there is an
>    interpreting mechanism, which lets the spec behave
>    like the real thing).
> 
> Hellwig
> 
> 
> 
> From: Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 12:45:37 CEST
> To: Michael Kjörling <michael@kjorling.se>
> Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> Michael Kjörling <michael@kjorling.se> wrote:
>> 
>> I suspect I must stand corrected on this. Turns out that at least GNU
>> bash 4.4.12(1) seems to not like a `;` at the beginning of the command
>> line.
> 
> This is a consequence of the POSIX shell grammar, which doesn't allow
> empty commands.
> 
> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2013edition/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_10
> 
> The prompt I have used since about 1997 (and I can't remember where I got
> it from - somewhere on Usenet, probably) in its most distilled form is
> 
> :;
> 
> although in practice I have a load of extra fluff for username, hostname,
> CWD, etc. usw.
> 
> Tony.
> -- 
> f.anthony.n.finch  <dot@dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
> Fair Isle, Faeroes: South or southwest 4 or 5, occasionally 6 for a time.
> Slight or moderate, occasionally rough for a time. Showers. Moderate or good.
> 
> 
> 
> From: Pete Turnbull <pete@dunnington.plus.com>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 13:24:20 CEST
> To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> On 07/08/2018 09:02, Michael Kjörling wrote:
>> On 7 Aug 2018 06:54 +0000, from michael@kjorling.se (Michael Kjörling):
>>> the shell will do The Right Thing (tm)
>> I suspect I must stand corrected on this. Turns out that at least GNU
>> bash 4.4.12(1) seems to not like a `;` at the beginning of the command
>> line.
>>     $ /bin/bash --version | head -n1
>>     GNU bash, version 4.4.12(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
>>     $ /bin/bash
>>     $ ; true
>>     bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;'
>>     $ echo $?
>>     2
>>     $
>> Hopefully other shells are more sane.
> 
> ksh and sh on an IRIX system don't like it either:
> 
> $ ;
> ksh: syntax error: `;' unexpected
> $
> 
> csh and tcsh don't mind.
> 
> Of course it works in rc itself, which is the point, really, and I wonder how often anyone pasted from one shell into another.  All the rc use I've seen did indeed use "; " as the prompt, but that was all at the University of York, starting in 1993.
> 
> -- 
> Pete
> Pete Turnbull
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 14:34:16 CEST
> To: tuhs@tuhs.org
> 
> 
>> The Bourne shell (V7) had setable PS1 (start of command) and PS2 (continuation prompts)
> 
> When PS2 came on the scene, Bob Morris noticed that it most often appeared
> because of a missing close quote. Therefore he set PS2="hit interrupt".
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Brian Zick <brian@zick.io>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 17:15:07 CEST
> To: Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>
> Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
>>> rc uses ;
>> 
>> Does it?  10th edition Unix and Plan 9 rc both have ('% ' ' ') as the   
>> default value of $prompt.  At least that's how it's described in the
>> manual. 
> 
> In NetBSD 7 the default is ';', but I don't see any reference to a default $prompt in the manual on that system. I wonder if this was a change unique to Berkeley.
> 
> B
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: "John P. Linderman" <jpl.jpl@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 17:52:57 CEST
> To: Brian Zick <brian@zick.io>
> Cc: Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>, tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> On vacation, with just an iPad keyboard, so I apologize for not doing more digging.  As I noted, when taking the blame for the Great Echo Schism, my early exposure to a hp2640 terminal that allowed “rentry” of a previous command was partly to blame. It also led me to use a PS1 ending in @, the default line-kill. When I reentered a command, the @ wiped out the prompt stuff, and only the command survived. 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 10:15 AM Brian Zick <brian@zick.io <mailto:brian@zick.io>> wrote:
> > > rc uses ;
> >        
> > Does it?  10th edition Unix and Plan 9 rc both have ('% ' ' ') as the   
> > default value of $prompt.  At least that's how it's described in the
> > manual. 
> 
> In NetBSD 7 the default is ';', but I don't see any reference to a default $prompt in the manual on that system. I wonder if this was a change unique to Berkeley.
> 
> B
> 
> 
> 
> From: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 19:35:49 CEST
> To: Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at>
> Cc: Michael Kjörling <michael@kjorling.se>, tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
>> The prompt I have used since about 1997 (and I can't remember where I got
>> it from - somewhere on Usenet, probably) in its most distilled form is
>> 
>> :;
> 
> I forget where I stole this from. It lives in $home/lib/profile on my Plan9 machines:
> 
> # /n/sources/contrib/lyndon/prompt.rc
> fn : {}
> fn setprompt {
>        prompt = (': '^`{cat /dev/user}^@^`{cat /dev/sysname}^':'^`{pwd}^'; '  '        ')
> }
> fn cd { builtin cd $* && setprompt }
> setprompt
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Cág <ca6c@bitmessage.ch>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 20:09:51 CEST
> To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> Brian Zick wrote:
> 
>> In NetBSD 7 the default is ';', but I don't see any reference to a
>> default $prompt in the manual on that system.
> 
> It's not. '$' is default for sh and ksh, and '%' for csh. I think
> it maybe has never been ';'.
> 
> --
> caóc
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: arnold@skeeve.com
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 20:51:52 CEST
> To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org, ca6c@bitmessage.ch
> 
> 
> C??g <ca6c@bitmessage.ch> wrote:
> 
>> Brian Zick wrote:
>> 
>>> In NetBSD 7 the default is ';', but I don't see any reference to a
>>> default $prompt in the manual on that system.
>> 
>> It's not. '$' is default for sh and ksh, and '%' for csh. I think
>> it maybe has never been ';'.
>> 
>> --
>> ca??c
>> 
> 
> Brian was referring to rc(1) in NetBSD.  I suspect it's Byron's rc
> and I think the default there is ';'.
> 
> Arnold
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Cág <ca6c@bitmessage.ch>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 21:00:22 CEST
> To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> arnold wrote:
> 
>> Brian was referring to rc(1) in NetBSD.  I suspect it's Byron's rc
>> and I think the default there is ';'.
> 
> rc is not shipped with NetBSD. There's Byron's rc in pkgsrc, so it could
> be that.
> 
> --
> caóc
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Brian Zick <brian@zick.io>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
> Date: 7 August 2018 at 21:06:03 CEST
> To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 7, 2018, at 8:00 PM, Cág wrote:
>> arnold wrote:
>> 
>>> Brian was referring to rc(1) in NetBSD.  I suspect it's Byron's rc
>>> and I think the default there is ';'.
>> 
>> rc is not shipped with NetBSD. There's Byron's rc in pkgsrc, so it could
>> be that.
> 
> Yes, I was referring to the rc in pkgsrc.
> 
> B
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS@minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tuhs


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Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Sijmen J. Mulder]

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> Decades ago I made my prompt simply end with a newline, which perfectly
> and cleanly solves the problem of making it easy to copy and paste a
> whole line 

I never considered setting a copy/paste-friendly prompt but I strongly
dislike prompts taking up a line. Admittedly it's nice to have some room
for extra information but then you'll want a clear line above it too for
visual structure and that's all just too much clutter for me.

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Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Don Hopkins]

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I strongly dislike something as trivial as a prompt taking up my TIME and ATTENTION. I have room for many more lines in my terminal emulator and emacs shell window than I have time and attention or patience for carefully pointing and clicking and editing out prompts (or even talking about half-assed kludges when there’s a simple obvious solution to the problem), and much better things to do with my time and energy. 

To me, there is virtually no cost to having an extra line in my terminal or shell window, while the repeated cost of all the time and effort I have to waste working around the clutter of the prompt, integrated over the hundreds of times per day I use the command line, totally overwhelms any aesthetic considerations of disliking prompts taking up a line (or insisting on a clear line before it -- I don’t understand why you would suggest such a straw man, which is not what I was advocating). I’m not trying to paint the Mona Lisa in ASCII art, I’m simply trying to save time and effort. 

What’s the downside to the prompt taking up a full line (and as a result, the command taking up a whole line without being polluted with a prompt), other than strongly disliking things you’re not used to? Is your terminal emulator configured to only remember 24 lines? And why are you so averse to clutter, yet have no problem with the prompt cluttering up your input, which causes real non-aesthetic problems? 

I used to use a shitty HP 2640 terminal in high school that only had a half a page of screen memory (but didn’t store the spaces at the end of the lines, so you could fit 12 80-character lines on the screen, or 24 40-character lines), so if you printed out long lines, it would start scrolling before there was a full screen of text. At least the 300 baud modem gave you time to ponder over those few lines before they scrolled off the screen. In that scenario, lines of text were precious, although the HP terminals charge by characters, not lines. But I don’t think anybody in their right mind uses terminals like that any more. 

-Don


> On 8 Aug 2018, at 14:32, Sijmen J. Mulder <ik@sjmulder.nl> wrote:
> 
> > Decades ago I made my prompt simply end with a newline, which perfectly
> > and cleanly solves the problem of making it easy to copy and paste a
> > whole line
>  
> I never considered setting a copy/paste-friendly prompt but I strongly
> dislike prompts taking up a line. Admittedly it's nice to have some room
> for extra information but then you'll want a clear line above it too for
> visual structure and that's all just too much clutter for me.


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Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Sijmen J. Mulder]

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> [...] totally overwhelms any aesthetic considerations of disliking
> prompts taking up a line (or insisting on a clear line before it -- I
> don’t understand why you would suggest such a straw man, which is not
> what I was advocating). 

I totally understand what you're saying, but I hardly ever copy and
paste between terminals so it's just not an issue to me and then
my preference for a compact prompt and little whitespace prevails.

I'll give you that the clear line thing is personal and won't
necessarily apply to others. The "you'll want to" was misplaced.

> At least the 300 baud modem gave you time to ponder over those few lines
> before they scrolled off the screen. In that scenario, lines of text
> were precious, although the HP terminals charge by characters, not
> lines. But I don’t think anybody in their right mind uses terminals like
> that any more. 

They charged per character? That's fascinating.

I'm too young to have worked with teletypes or terminals but to
experience what working over a slower connection would be like I wrote
a small pty program that throttles stdin and stdout to a given baud
rate:

https://github.com/sjmulder/trickle

It's probably nothing like the real thing but I found it interesting to
experience adapting to a slow terminal and to see things like pagers
update the screen step by step.  

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Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Clem Cole]

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On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 9:51 AM, Sijmen J. Mulder <ik@sjmulder.nl> wrote:

> I'm too young to have worked with teletypes or terminals but to
>
> experience what working over a slower connection would be like I wrote
>
> a small pty program that throttles stdin and stdout to a given baud
>
> rate
>
Sadly you are missing three important features in your emulation.  First
the noise and the second associated motion of the carriage as the printer
did its thing.  (The movement of the 'ball' (cylinder on a TTY) was magical
and made it quite set of sounds you will never forget - often duplicated in
the movies).   But the hardest thing to simulate is the distinct smell of
light machine oil that all terminal rooms had.
Clem
ᐧ

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Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Lawrence Stewart]

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Oh my yes.  The Model 33’s and the 2741s…  The timer setting off the ball rotate to remind you the computer is tapping its foot...

But all is not lost for those from the ‘80s.  There is 

http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/ <http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/>

a terminal emulator prepared to mimic screen curvature, flicker, visible scan lines, etc.

-Larry

> On 2018, Aug 8, at 10:45 AM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 9:51 AM, Sijmen J. Mulder <ik@sjmulder.nl <mailto:ik@sjmulder.nl>> wrote:
> I'm too young to have worked with teletypes or terminals but to
> 
> 
> experience what working over a slower connection would be like I wrote
> 
> a small pty program that throttles stdin and stdout to a given baud
> 
> rate
> 
> Sadly you are missing three important features in your emulation.  First the noise and the second associated motion of the carriage as the printer did its thing.  (The movement of the 'ball' (cylinder on a TTY) was magical and made it quite set of sounds you will never forget - often duplicated in the movies).   But the hardest thing to simulate is the distinct smell of light machine oil that all terminal rooms had. 
> Clem 
> ᐧ


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[TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Toby Thain]

On 2018-08-08 10:45 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 9:51 AM, Sijmen J. Mulder <ik@sjmulder.nl
> <mailto:ik@sjmulder.nl>> wrote:
> 
>     I'm too young to have worked with teletypes or terminals but to
> 
>     __
> 
>     experience what working over a slower connection would be like I
>     wrote____
> 
>     a small pty program that throttles stdin and stdout to a given baud____
> 
>     rate
> 
> Sadly you are missing three important features in your emulation.  First
> the noise and the second associated motion of the carriage as the
> printer did its thing.  (The movement of the 'ball' (cylinder on a TTY)
> was magical and made it quite set of sounds you will never forget -
> often duplicated in the movies).   But the hardest thing to simulate is
> the distinct smell of light machine oil that all terminal rooms had. 

Isn't this easy? Just use a spritzer of it around your PC.

--T

> Clem 
> ᐧ

Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Cornelius Keck]

Then promptly run into trouble with your SO and/or XO because they don't 
like the fragrance?


Toby Thain wrote:
> On 2018-08-08 10:45 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 9:51 AM, Sijmen J. Mulder <ik@sjmulder.nl
>> <mailto:ik@sjmulder.nl>> wrote:
>>
>>      I'm too young to have worked with teletypes or terminals but to
>>
>>      __
>>
>>      experience what working over a slower connection would be like I
>>      wrote____
>>
>>      a small pty program that throttles stdin and stdout to a given baud____
>>
>>      rate
>>
>> Sadly you are missing three important features in your emulation.  First
>> the noise and the second associated motion of the carriage as the
>> printer did its thing.  (The movement of the 'ball' (cylinder on a TTY)
>> was magical and made it quite set of sounds you will never forget -
>> often duplicated in the movies).   But the hardest thing to simulate is
>> the distinct smell of light machine oil that all terminal rooms had.
>
> Isn't this easy? Just use a spritzer of it around your PC.
>
> --T
>
>> Clem
>> ᐧ
>

Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Jim Geist]

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I have a functional LA120 in my house and can attest to the machine smell
whenever I run it.

On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 11:50 AM Cornelius Keck <ckeck@texoma.net> wrote:

> Then promptly run into trouble with your SO and/or XO because they don't
> like the fragrance?
>
>
> Toby Thain wrote:
> > On 2018-08-08 10:45 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 9:51 AM, Sijmen J. Mulder <ik@sjmulder.nl
> >> <mailto:ik@sjmulder.nl>> wrote:
> >>
> >>      I'm too young to have worked with teletypes or terminals but to
> >>
> >>      __
> >>
> >>      experience what working over a slower connection would be like I
> >>      wrote____
> >>
> >>      a small pty program that throttles stdin and stdout to a given
> baud____
> >>
> >>      rate
> >>
> >> Sadly you are missing three important features in your emulation.  First
> >> the noise and the second associated motion of the carriage as the
> >> printer did its thing.  (The movement of the 'ball' (cylinder on a TTY)
> >> was magical and made it quite set of sounds you will never forget -
> >> often duplicated in the movies).   But the hardest thing to simulate is
> >> the distinct smell of light machine oil that all terminal rooms had.
> >
> > Isn't this easy? Just use a spritzer of it around your PC.
> >
> > --T
> >
> >> Clem
> >> ᐧ
> >
>

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Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Warner Losh]

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Especially if you use the WD40 trick for the ink ribbon. :)

Warner

On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 1:14 PM Jim Geist <velocityboy@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a functional LA120 in my house and can attest to the machine smell
> whenever I run it.
>
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 11:50 AM Cornelius Keck <ckeck@texoma.net> wrote:
>
>> Then promptly run into trouble with your SO and/or XO because they don't
>> like the fragrance?
>>
>>
>> Toby Thain wrote:
>> > On 2018-08-08 10:45 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 9:51 AM, Sijmen J. Mulder <ik@sjmulder.nl
>> >> <mailto:ik@sjmulder.nl>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>      I'm too young to have worked with teletypes or terminals but to
>> >>
>> >>      __
>> >>
>> >>      experience what working over a slower connection would be like I
>> >>      wrote____
>> >>
>> >>      a small pty program that throttles stdin and stdout to a given
>> baud____
>> >>
>> >>      rate
>> >>
>> >> Sadly you are missing three important features in your emulation.
>> First
>> >> the noise and the second associated motion of the carriage as the
>> >> printer did its thing.  (The movement of the 'ball' (cylinder on a TTY)
>> >> was magical and made it quite set of sounds you will never forget -
>> >> often duplicated in the movies).   But the hardest thing to simulate is
>> >> the distinct smell of light machine oil that all terminal rooms had.
>> >
>> > Isn't this easy? Just use a spritzer of it around your PC.
>> >
>> > --T
>> >
>> >> Clem
>> >> ᐧ
>> >
>>
>

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Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[arnold]

Which was ...?

Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

> Especially if you use the WD40 trick for the ink ribbon. :)
>
> Warner
>
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 1:14 PM Jim Geist <velocityboy@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I have a functional LA120 in my house and can attest to the machine smell
> > whenever I run it.

Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Jim Geist]

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You can supposedly revive dried out ribbons by soaking them in WD40. I’ve
heard of it but never tried it.

On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 10:14 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:

> Which was ...?
>
> Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
> > Especially if you use the WD40 trick for the ink ribbon. :)
> >
> > Warner
> >
> > On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 1:14 PM Jim Geist <velocityboy@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I have a functional LA120 in my house and can attest to the machine
> smell
> > > whenever I run it.
>

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Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[George Michaelson]

I used to quick start my mower by a spray into the carb. This tells me
that WD40 apart from being an intoxicatingly manly perfume, is
flammable.

I suggest that the static ball of fluff which is any print device with
paper crud, chad, and other ephemeral bits of detritus (including
probably half a tonne of skin flakes) is not the best place to spray
WD40.

Do it outside.

real programmers don't let other programmers smoke around printing devices...

-G

On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 3:55 PM, Jim Geist <velocityboy@gmail.com> wrote:
> You can supposedly revive dried out ribbons by soaking them in WD40. I’ve
> heard of it but never tried it.
>
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 10:14 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>>
>> Which was ...?
>>
>> Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Especially if you use the WD40 trick for the ink ribbon. :)
>> >
>> > Warner
>> >
>> > On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 1:14 PM Jim Geist <velocityboy@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > I have a functional LA120 in my house and can attest to the machine
>> > > smell
>> > > whenever I run it.

Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Dave Horsfall]

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On Wed, 8 Aug 2018, Jim Geist wrote:

> You can supposedly revive dried out ribbons by soaking them in WD40. 
> I’ve heard of it but never tried it.

It's a common trick in the Teletype[tm] world (usually RTTY enthusiasts 
i.e. Amateur radio teletype).

-- Dave (VK2KFU)

Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Warner Losh]

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It works. For the ribbon type printers, it gets the ink moving enough to
get a second or third use from the cart. Print quality was dicey, but for
listings to do debugging on a dot matrix printer, quality wasn't the name
of the game. Just don't use too much...

Warner

On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 11:56 PM Jim Geist <velocityboy@gmail.com> wrote:

> You can supposedly revive dried out ribbons by soaking them in WD40. I’ve
> heard of it but never tried it.
>
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 10:14 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>
>> Which was ...?
>>
>> Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Especially if you use the WD40 trick for the ink ribbon. :)
>> >
>> > Warner
>> >
>> > On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 1:14 PM Jim Geist <velocityboy@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > I have a functional LA120 in my house and can attest to the machine
>> smell
>> > > whenever I run it.
>>
>

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Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Clem Cole]

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On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 4:44 PM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

> Especially if you use the WD40 trick for the ink ribbon. :
>
Hmmrrph.... Youngsters...    WD40 is silcon based.   Real "3 in One" oil
(came in a small can) is light machine oil but you can still get it:
https://www.3inone.com/handyu/
It's what Teletype used (and spec'ed in the maintence manual).  Different
odor.


ᐧ

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Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Michael Parson]

On Thu, 9 Aug 2018, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 11:56 PM Jim Geist <velocityboy@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 10:14 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Which was ...?
>
>> You can supposedly revive dried out ribbons by soaking them in WD40. I’ve
>> heard of it but never tried it.
>
> It works. For the ribbon type printers, it gets the ink moving enough to
> get a second or third use from the cart. Print quality was dicey, but for
> listings to do debugging on a dot matrix printer, quality wasn't the name
> of the game. Just don't use too much...

I don't have much experience with hardcopy terminals, but I did use the
WD-40 trick on dot-matrix printers in the 80s (Commodore MPS 803 was my
first printer).

Only time I used a hard-copy term was at my first job at a university
computer lab, our line printer went down, so, I dragged an LA120 out of
storage and hooked it up to serve as the printer until we could get the
line printer serviced.

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Derek Fawcus]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 09:31:39AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> Hmmrrph.... Youngsters...    WD40 is silcon based.

I didn't know that; never I checked the can; but yeah a distinctive smell...

> Real "3 in One" oil
> (came in a small can) is light machine oil but you can still get it:

Yup, useful on bike chains and oilstones (as in sharpening chisels and planes).

DF

Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Eric Wayte]

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In an episode of The Little Rascals / Our Gang series, the teacher asked a
little girl what's 2 and 1, and she replied "shoe polish".  The teacher
then asked her, what's 3 and 1, to which she replied "oil".

On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 10:15 AM Derek Fawcus <
dfawcus+lists-tuhs@employees.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 09:31:39AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> > Hmmrrph.... Youngsters...    WD40 is silcon based.
>
> I didn't know that; never I checked the can; but yeah a distinctive
> smell...
>
> > Real "3 in One" oil
> > (came in a small can) is light machine oil but you can still get it:
>
> Yup, useful on bike chains and oilstones (as in sharpening chisels and
> planes).
>
> DF
>


-- 
Eric Wayte

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Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Pete Turnbull]

On 09/08/2018 15:26, Eric Wayte wrote:
> In an episode of The Little Rascals / Our Gang series, the teacher asked 
> a little girl what's 2 and 1, and she replied "shoe polish".  The 
> teacher then asked her, what's 3 and 1, to which she replied "oil".

I like that!

-- 
Pete
Pete Turnbull

Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Pete Turnbull]

On 09/08/2018 15:15, Derek Fawcus wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 09:31:39AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
>> Hmmrrph.... Youngsters...    WD40 is silcon based.
> 
> I didn't know that; never I checked the can; but yeah a distinctive smell...

Ordinary WD40 is NOT silicone based (obNitPick: note the 'e': not 
silicon, which is a hard crystalline substance).  There is a 
"specialist" silicone-based version but ordinary WD40 is hydrocarbon 
based, being a mixture of light paraffin (naptha to transpondians, ie 
the stuff that's used as a solvent or fuel) and a paraffin wax, as 
stated in the manufacturer's official MSDS document.

The characteristic smell is largely from an aromatic hydrocarbon additive.

>> Real "3 in One" oil
>> (came in a small can) is light machine oil but you can still get it:
> 
> Yup, useful on bike chains and oilstones (as in sharpening chisels and planes).

And not much else, because like a lot of simple hydrocarbon oils 
developed half a century or more ago, it oxidises to a gummy substance.

The Teletype manual definitely doesn't suggest 3-in-One oil and some 
sources suggest it's too thick anyway.  The manual in front of me 
specifies two Western Electric part numbers for oil and grease.  It's 
been discussed more than once on the Greenkeys list, and there's a 
useful page listing modern equivalents at Doug Jones' page:
https://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/UI-8/ks7470oil.shtml

-- 
Pete
Pete Turnbull

Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS]

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Pete Turnbull <pete@dunnington.plus.com> writes:

> The Teletype manual definitely doesn't suggest 3-in-One oil and some
> sources suggest it's too thick anyway.  The manual in front of me
> specifies two Western Electric part numbers for oil and grease.

A couple of decades ago, I got hold of a Teletype that sort of worked,
but was extremely unreliable.  After studying that manual, and deciding
that the proper lubrication plan was too complex for my tastes, I just
turned the thing on with the top off, and emptied a spray can of CRC
5-56 into the mechanism while exercising the keyboard.  It proceeded to
work well for my off-and-on use for several years after that.

-tih
-- 
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay

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Re: [TUHS] the distinct smell of light machine oil, was Re: TUHS Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

[Pete Turnbull]

On 10/08/2018 17:24, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo wrote:
> Pete Turnbull <pete@dunnington.plus.com> writes:
> 
>> The Teletype manual definitely doesn't suggest 3-in-One oil
> 
> A couple of decades ago, I got hold of a Teletype that sort of worked,
> but was extremely unreliable.  After studying that manual, and deciding
> that the proper lubrication plan was too complex for my tastes, I just
> turned the thing on with the top off, and emptied a spray can of CRC
> 5-56 into the mechanism while exercising the keyboard.  It proceeded to
> work well for my off-and-on use for several years after that.

TBH, I suspect that for occasional use, you don't need to use the 
perfect lubricants, just not something that turns into glue during 
periods of disuse.  I wouldn't spray WD40 into anything, though, except 
maybe a dried out ribbon which was what Warner described.

-- 
Pete
Pete Turnbull