Re: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

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On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 12:26 PM Stephen Clark <sclark46@earthlink.net>
wrote:


> May have had to do with the first terminal commonly used with UNIX.
>
> The Model 33
>

In fact the Labs had the more recent Model 37, which did lower case, unlike
the 33.  Consequently, Unix was (I think) the first case-sensitive
operating system.  However, it had to work on 33s as well; if you tried to
log in using an uppercase username, login would turn on the IUCLC and OLCUC
bits of /dev/tty, and if you needed an uppercase letter you had to escape
it (I think with \), which the tty driver processed.

Thanks to everyone for filling in all the gaps in the chain from dollar
bills to 80-column terminal windows that I had left implicit.  To clarify
my position, what I am opposed to is not the use of 80-column windows for
*reading* email.  I'm not happy with what happens to text that is
hard-wrapped at 80 columns when displayed in a narrower window, as often
happens to me now that I use larger fonts than I used to.  The
text/format-flowed MIME type was supposed to help with this problem, but
never really caught on.



"Well, I'm back."  --Sam        John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>

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