an odd question

From: Messick, Gary <Gary.Messick_at_itt.com>
Date: Thu Aug 9 10:45:09 2001

I think Wordstar pre-dates MS-DOS by more than a few years ;)

Gary

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Master of all that Sucks [mailto:vance_at_ikickass.org]
> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 9:56 AM
> To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: an odd question
>
>
>
> Well, MS-DOS 1.0 was doing it long before WordStar.
>
> Peace... Sridhar
>
> On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, Jeff Hellige wrote:
>
> > on 8/9/01 9:47 AM, Dan Wright at dtwright_at_uiuc.edu wrote:
> > > not sure if this is exactly on-topic, but I figure if
> anyone would know, it
> > > would be this bunch... where did the convention of using
> "^x" to represent
> > > "Ctrl-x" come from? I wonder because you see that
> convention everywhere, but
> > > it's totally non-intuitave -- i.e. why does the carat
> symbol mean "hold
> > > control
> > > while pressing the following key"? I think this came up
> because someone
> > > pointed out that using pine the first time was really
> hard until they figured
> > > out what "^" meant. so, anyone know where that
> convention came from?
> >
> > I believe Wordstar used to display the control
> sequences for cut and
> > pasting and other block move type commands in that format
> in it's menus.
> > I'm almost positive that versions of Worstar I was using on
> XT-clones in the
> > mid-80's were like that. At the time, quite a large number
> of text editors,
> > including those included with programs such as TurboBasic,
> used the Wordstar
> > commands and conventions as well.
> >
> > Jeff
> >
>
Received on Thu Aug 09 2001 - 10:45:09 BST