14 Jan
2025
14 Jan
'25
12:59 p.m.
On Jan 14, 2025, at 3:45 PM, Frank Leonhardt via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
...
Yeah, I know there were fancy character set machines out there later. Look at APL
keyboards, for example. ASCII spoiled all the fun.
Fixed in Unicode... :-)
Baudot, of course, was several domain-specific
versions. They didn't even all have the same letter/figure shift code, never mind the
same symbols in the same place. You had to just know what the wierdnesses were on any
teleprinter that wasn't an original Creed (as supplied by Elliott). I've still got
a Baudot ASR33 in the shed, although I might have scavenged it for parts for the ASCII.
Mostly common linkage parts on the Baudot - just fewer of them :-)
That would be an ASR32.
I remember seeing a listing of some of the variations of Baudot. One of them was the
"weather" version, which had a pile of meteorology symbols in the figures set
for use by weather station reporting. There were many versions. An odd one I remember is
the Electrologica X8 console, which has printable characters for the 000 code point (# for
ltrs and * for figures). Not to mention a figures character the users referred to as
"iron cross".
For even more strangeness consider the various flavors of six-bit teleprinter codes, which
were used in the typesetting business. Services like Associated Press would distribute
their news stories using those codes. A special variant came with a pile of different
fractions, for sending stock listings. Those codes would give you upper and lower case,
but there was still a shift code called "upper rail" or "lower rail",
a reference to Linotype line-casting machines. Upper rail meant italics, as I recall.
paul