I don't know if there is still anyone else out there that ever had to use punch cards and tele-type machines to use a computer, but on a tele-type you would send a <CR> to go to the start of a line. Then you could space over and re-type words that you wanted in bold, or you could send a <LF> to start a new line. CP/M was designed for this type of environment, and MSDOS/Windows propagated this as their standard behavior even though it hasn't made any sense for decades. Grant Q -----Original Message----- From: Carlos E. R. [mailto:robin1.listas@tiscali.es] Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 12:07 PM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] basic printer needed {resent no answer} On 2003.02.03 21:37 zentara wrote:
combination of carriage return and line feed (CR LF).
True: I don't always remember which is the one unix uses. I always have wondered why unix does it that way :-?
I think it would be better to ask why Windows does it with CRLF? Mac uses CR, so why would Windows waste all those bits?
Er... Windows does the same as plain Dos, which I suspect inherits that behaviour from CP/M -- I'm guessing about CP/M, but Dos did inherit a lot of things from that OS. In any case, Dos is older that Mac, isn't it? And, as Graham says, it is a combination used on printing machines, which allowed overprinting a character (undercase or boldcase, for example). On the console, it allowed programs using standard input to reuse the same line many times, and create simple progress info, like a text progress bar. I used that trick many times, I found it useful. True, it is one more byte every line... but that is not a very big deal. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com