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  • [OT] Printer control characters (was Re: GNU diff output defaults)

    From Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to David W. Hodgins on Mon Aug 8 04:25:38 2022
    On 07.08.2022 19:48, David W. Hodgins wrote:

    133 characters were sent to the printer. The first byte was not
    printed. A blank in that character was for single spacing, 0 for
    double spacing, 1 for page advance, and + for write without advancing
    for highlighting or underlining, using the standard page ribbon.

    I faintly recall that we had two printer-channels/queues, if we've
    sent to the "raw" one the application data in character column 1
    had triggered printer control operations like the ones you wrote.
    It gave fancy "output" e.g. in form of many many empty pages - a
    very fast way to produce toilet paper. The speed was amazing.

    Janis

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  • From Dan Espen@21:1/5 to David W. Hodgins on Mon Aug 8 00:03:59 2022
    "David W. Hodgins" <dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org> writes:

    On Sun, 07 Aug 2022 22:25:38 -0400, Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou@hotmail.com> wrote:
    I faintly recall that we had two printer-channels/queues, if we've
    sent to the "raw" one the application data in character column 1
    had triggered printer control operations like the ones you wrote.
    It gave fancy "output" e.g. in form of many many empty pages - a
    very fast way to produce toilet paper. The speed was amazing.

    I remember similar pranks. Putting a 2 in the fba, which since the tape didn't
    have a hole in column 2 would dump out the box of fan fold paper. Really annoyed whoever was operator at the time it ran, especially if they'd just put in a new box.

    My first programming instructor demonstrated the printer trying to empty
    a box of paper in seconds. Then he told us, "that is why all carriage
    control tapes must have _all_ channels punched".

    --
    Dan Espen

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  • From David W. Hodgins@21:1/5 to Janis Papanagnou on Sun Aug 7 23:22:28 2022
    On Sun, 07 Aug 2022 22:25:38 -0400, Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou@hotmail.com> wrote:
    I faintly recall that we had two printer-channels/queues, if we've
    sent to the "raw" one the application data in character column 1
    had triggered printer control operations like the ones you wrote.
    It gave fancy "output" e.g. in form of many many empty pages - a
    very fast way to produce toilet paper. The speed was amazing.

    I remember similar pranks. Putting a 2 in the fba, which since the tape didn't have a hole in column 2 would dump out the box of fan fold paper. Really annoyed whoever was operator at the time it ran, especially if they'd just
    put in a new box.

    Regards, Dave Hodgins

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