On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 12:52 AM, Earl Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 10/8/2010 11:47 AM, nan wich wrote: > > @Gerhard: 80 lines was how long a punch card was. What a ridiculous > > reason to use 80 any more. Are you even old enough to have ever seen a > > punch card? I almost forgot, the original IBM System/3 had punch cards > > Yes, Nancy, there are actually a few adults on this list. Though I doubt > many of us are old enough to have actually USED a punch card, since > people who did work on punch cards should be pretty close to retirement > age by now. > Nope! Used them in 1985 in a course, where the norm was to write your code on a sheet and then send it to an operator who will punch it and then it would be compiled from cards. That was a training course though, terminals were available at the same time. Also saw vendor system engineers who were puzzled for a couple of days and could not boot a new system because it was the first of its kind in that region NOT to have a punched card reader. Saw at least one client in the early 90s who had working punched card readers and JCL jobs for them. Still a decade or two until I retire. 80 characters was the common width of monitors, which descended from > punch cards, but is also pretty close to the 72 character width of the > common typewriter (pica, if I remember right) with standard margins. An 80 character card had a 6 character sequence number, for some languages (e.g. COBOL) so if the card deck falls on the floor you can do a sort run and it will sort it correctly. Column 7 was for comments (an * in COBOL for example). This leaves 73 characters. Not sure if that was related (can't use the full 80 on a terminal card image?) RFC > 2822 imposed the limit (as a SHOULD not MUST) because many terminals > failed to wrap on their own, and terminals often had 80 CPL in order to > be standard. Though many terminals also had 132 or, if you were > unfortunate enough to use a VIC-20 (and maybe a PET, I forget) you could > get 40 CPL. > 132 was much later, and was not a standard. Mostly some DEC VT, or that is where it started. > Also, RFC2822 is still in effect; if an email message is in text/plain, > it is polite to go ahead and wrap at 78 per the spec. If your message is > text/html then wrapping is pointless. > Yes! -- Khalid M. Baheyeldin 2bits.com, Inc. http://2bits.com Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting. Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. -- Edsger W.Dijkstra Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. -- Leonardo da Vinci
