Purely historic question: VT200 text graphic programming

GrayShark howe.steven at gmail.com
Fri Mar 11 05:39:02 EST 2011


On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:26:37 -0800, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

> On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:55:02 +0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards
> <invalid at invalid.invalid> declaimed the following in
> gmane.comp.python.general:
> 
>> vt200 terminals.  The vt200 wasn't a TV.  It was a character-based,
>> mostly-ANSI-escape-sequence, computer terminal connected via async
> 
> 	I think the order went the other way -- I think most of the ANSI
> sequences were inherited from the VT52/VT100 terminals.

Are you implying ascii came after the VT52/VT110 terminals? VT52 is a ascii 
code based piece of shit, including the backspace/return character set 
(which Windows still honors like it's a deity). 

Working from the old days, the ascii set used 0->127 (zero -> seventh bit) 
to represent special keys and sounds, letters, numbers and common 
punctuations. The eight bit was reserved for error correct. Remember this 
was a serial 'printer' console language. It need updating as much as the 
QWERTY keyboard does. 

Sometime after 1975, graphical glyphs were added, using the eighth bit.
Some VT models supported the extended ascii, as did IBM-DOS.

Strange the history one remembers.



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