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From: Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk>
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: @ SCOS Message Format ?
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2025 08:57:02 +0000
Organization: Fix this later
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On 22/02/2025 08:19, David Entwistle wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Feb 2025 06:36:18 +0000, Richard Heathfield wrote:
> 
>> Irrelevant, I'm afraid, David.
>>
> 
> I don't believe so.
> 
> Any newsreader will have at its heart a terminal emulation function, where
> the characteristics of the early electromechanical terminals are
> accurately reproduced via software.

Why? That's not how I would write a newsreader. What possible 
value could it have?

> Although convenient to forget that, it
> remains true.

Citation needed, as they say.

> The details of the implementation of the caret control set
> will have depended on the details of the emulation chosen.

Assumes "facts" not in evidence.

> The newsreader software developers may, like us, may have forgotten about
> this detail but it will remain embedded in any software that has been with
> us for as long as USENET.

Deeply unlikely in my opinion. Would anyone else care to comment?

> For more recently developed readers, the
> behaviour may be less well defined. In either case it would be unwise to
> assume that sending a caret followed by a capital letter A to the reader
> will result in those two characters being displayed.

I don't see why; I really don't. A newsreader that screwed up so 
badly would quickly be condemned as unusable.

> A perfectly correct
> and compliant implementation will not. If the emulation says it should
> treat it as a control sequence, that is what it will do.

Then the newsreader, if that's how it works, remains broken for 
the same reason I outlined in my last article. A newsreader that 
cannot correctly render the following code:

           out=in^key;

is not fit for purpose in sci.crypt.

-- 
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within