On 9/10/2013 2:00 AM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
As I say, it was an epiphany; I realized that TOPS-10 was trying to use literate English conventions all along; it was just the TTY that was folding to monocase. Later, using CDC Kronos, and then IBM MVS, I wondered, why couldn't they do likewise: let the output device fold if it chooses to; otherwise let it display mixed case.
I understand your point, but the ASR 33 always was a mono-case device. So the implementers had a choice of folding lower case characters, or replacing them by a substitute (and I've run across abominations where an unprintable was left blank). When I ran on the CDC 6600, the issue never came up (straight ForTran numeric calculations). But IBM left the translation up the the installation - the UCS definition for the IBM 1403 printers had a FOLD option bit, honored by the hardware. Normally it was matched to the print train (AN, HN, PN, etc. folded, SN and TN didn't. I don't recall YN - we never had one).
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, Vermont ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
