A poster, unidentified for purposes of this message, belched out the
following flecks of sadly mis-informed disinformation:
> > Typewriters were a passing fad of the 19th century.
>
>
> > But when it comes to Alt, you gotta admit that it originates in the
> > PC (PeeCee, pee sea, etc) world.
>
Well, the Scholes keyset has been with us from the late 1800s up to the
present day - dang! I'm typing on one now! with all it's faults and
foibles - it's the One We All Use.
When it comes to the 'ALT' key - I gotta admit that I am openly
chagrinned and depressed by the crud that folks spew forth w/out taking
even a few seconds to just a tiny bit of Basic Research:
http://asciitable.com/
And it has it's origins back in the 70s and the world of Remote Job
Processing, where there became an increasing need for ALTernate character
sets - as in APL f'rinstance.
It's just amazing to this old curmudgeonly guy - the number of people who
seem to believe that Bill Gates invented the computer and all it's
software and protocols - oh yeah, except for those wacky Hippies over at
Apple - but who uses that shit, anyway...?
Here endeth this Sunday's Rant.
Cheers
John
Received on Sun Feb 22 2004 - 15:53:46 GMT