On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 12:52 AM, Earl Miles <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:merlin@logrus.com">merlin@logrus.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On 10/8/2010 11:47 AM, nan wich wrote:<br>
> @Gerhard: 80 lines was how long a punch card was. What a ridiculous<br>
> reason to use 80 any more. Are you even old enough to have ever seen a<br>
> punch card? I almost forgot, the original IBM System/3 had punch cards<br>
<br>
</div>Yes, Nancy, there are actually a few adults on this list. Though I doubt<br>
many of us are old enough to have actually USED a punch card, since<br>
people who did work on punch cards should be pretty close to retirement<br>
age by now.<br></blockquote><div><br> <br>Nope!<br><br>Used them in 1985 in a course, where the norm was to write your code<br>on a sheet and then send it to an operator who will punch it and then it<br>would be compiled from cards.<br>
<br>That was a training course though, terminals were available at the same<br>time.<br><br>Also saw vendor system engineers who were puzzled for a couple of days<br>and could not boot a new system because it was the first of its kind in that<br>
region NOT to have a punched card reader.<br><br>Saw at least one client in the early 90s who had working punched card<br>readers and JCL jobs for them.<br><br>Still a decade or two until I retire. <br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
80 characters was the common width of monitors, which descended from<br>
punch cards, but is also pretty close to the 72 character width of the<br>
common typewriter (pica, if I remember right) with standard margins. </blockquote><div><br>An 80 character card had a 6 character sequence number, for some <br>languages (e.g. COBOL) so if the card deck falls on the floor you can do <br>
a sort run and it will sort it correctly. Column 7 was for comments (an * <br>in COBOL for example). This leaves 73 characters. <br><br>Not sure if that was related (can't use the full 80 on a terminal card image?)<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">RFC<br>
2822 imposed the limit (as a SHOULD not MUST) because many terminals<br>
failed to wrap on their own, and terminals often had 80 CPL in order to<br>
be standard. Though many terminals also had 132 or, if you were<br>
unfortunate enough to use a VIC-20 (and maybe a PET, I forget) you could<br>
get 40 CPL.<br></blockquote><div><br>132 was much later, and was not a standard. Mostly some DEC VT, or that is where it started.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Also, RFC2822 is still in effect; if an email message is in text/plain,<br>
it is polite to go ahead and wrap at 78 per the spec. If your message is<br>
text/html then wrapping is pointless.<br>
</blockquote></div><br>Yes!<br>-- <br>Khalid M. Baheyeldin<br><a href="http://2bits.com">2bits.com</a>, Inc.<br><a href="http://2bits.com">http://2bits.com</a><br>Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.<br>
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. -- Edsger W.Dijkstra<br>Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. -- Leonardo da Vinci<br>