Re: [TUHS] Seeking wisdom from Unix Greybeards

["Greg A. Woods" <woods@robohack.ca>]

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At Thu, 26 Nov 2020 22:48:25 +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen@sdaoden.eu> wrote:
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Seeking wisdom from Unix Greybeards
>
> ANSI escape sequences aka ISO 6429 came via ECMA-48 i have
> learned, and that appeared first in 1976 (that via Wikidpedia).

Wikipedia is a bit misleading here.  This is one case where ANSI and
ECMA worked together quite closely (and another example of where ISO
took the result more or less directly, though on a different schedule).

As it happens one can read about it much more directly from the original
sources.

First we can find that FIPS-86 is "in whole" ANSI-X3.64-1979

	https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/FIPS/fipspub86-1981.pdf

Thus giving us "free" access to the original ANSI standard in a "new"
digital (PDF) form.  Here's the full copy of ANSI-X3.64-1979 verbatim
(including cover pages):

	https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/FIPS/fipspub86.pdf

See in particular "Appendix H" in the latter.

X3.64 also gives a good list of all the people and organisations which
cooperated to create this standard (though interestingly only mentions
ECMA-48 in that last appendix).

There is also corroborating evidence of this cooperation in the preface
("BRIEF HISTORY") to the 2nd Edition of ECMA-48:

	https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-48_2nd_edition_august_1979.pdf

Note though that the link the 1st Edition of ECMA-48 here is wrong, so
as yet I've not seen if there's any history given in that 1st edition):

	https://www.ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecma-48/

As an aside, the DEC VT100 terminal was an early (it came out a year
before X3.64) and relatively complete (for a video terminal application)
implementation of X3.64.

BTW, I would in general agree with Steffen that implementing an
application to output anything but X3.64/ECMA-48/ISO-6429 is rather
pointless these days, _unless_ one wants to take advantage of any
particular implementation's additional "private" features, and/or work
around any annoying but inevitable bugs in various implementations.
Also the API provided by, e.g. libcurses, often makes for much easier
programming than direct use of escape sequences, or invention and
maintenance of one's own API.

--
					Greg A. Woods <gwoods@acm.org>

Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>     Avoncote Farms <woods@avoncote.ca>

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