shebang strange thing...

[Ben Finney]

On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 10:46:49 +0100, Tim Rowe wrote:
> On 27 Jun 2003 09:33:23 +0950, Ben Finney wrote:
>>So, it was teletypes that needlessly preserved the CR and LF as
>>separate control operations
> 
> It wasn't needless.  A CR with no LF  was often used for overstriking,
> as a way of extending the rather limited character set.  'O'
> overstruck with '-' would make a passable \Theta, for instance..

Overstriking is amply catered for with the BS (BackSpace) control code.
For the "theta" example:  emit a 'O', emit a BS, emit a '-'.  In fact,
this method continues today in some *roff outputs, for bold or digraph
characters.  The CR is completely redundant for this purpose.

I maintain that the CR and LF were needlessly preserved as separate
operations, with no benefit.

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