Re: [TUHS] Seeking wisdom from Unix Greybeards

At Thu, 26 Nov 2020 22:48:25 +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen(a)sdaoden.eu> wrote: Subject: Re: [TUHS] Seeking wisdom from Unix Greybeards Wikipedia is a bit misleading here. This is one case where ANSI and ECMA worked together quite closely (and another example of where ISO took the result more or less directly, though on a different schedule). As it happens one can read about it much more directly from the original sources. First we can find that FIPS-86 is "in whole" ANSI-X3.64-1979 https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/FIPS/fipspub86-1981.pdf Thus giving us "free" access to the original ANSI standard in a "new" digital (PDF) form. Here's the full copy of ANSI-X3.64-1979 verbatim (including cover pages): https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/FIPS/fipspub86.pdf See in particular "Appendix H" in the latter. X3.64 also gives a good list of all the people and organisations which cooperated to create this standard (though interestingly only mentions ECMA-48 in that last appendix). There is also corroborating evidence of this cooperation in the preface ("BRIEF HISTORY") to the 2nd Edition of ECMA-48: https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-48_2nd_edition_a… Note though that the link the 1st Edition of ECMA-48 here is wrong, so as yet I've not seen if there's any history given in that 1st edition): https://www.ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecm… As an aside, the DEC VT100 terminal was an early (it came out a year before X3.64) and relatively complete (for a video terminal application) implementation of X3.64. BTW, I would in general agree with Steffen that implementing an application to output anything but X3.64/ECMA-48/ISO-6429 is rather pointless these days, _unless_ one wants to take advantage of any particular implementation's additional "private" features, and/or work around any annoying but inevitable bugs in various implementations. Also the API provided by, e.g. libcurses, often makes for much easier programming than direct use of escape sequences, or invention and maintenance of one's own API. -- Greg A. Woods <gwoods(a)acm.org> Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods(a)robohack.ca> Planix, Inc. <woods(a)planix.com> Avoncote Farms <woods(a)avoncote.ca>