10 Feb
2011
10 Feb
'11
6:19 p.m.
> Absolutely, with a few steps in between, such as
the FORTRAN language
> being designed with a fixed 80 columns. The cards caused a de-facto
> standardization throughout the Data processing industry.
On Thu, 10 Feb 2011, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Actually, 72 columns. 73-80 wasn't used--that may
go back to 704
hardwarware, I don't recall.
I have to disagree. Although 73-80 were not used by the COMPILER, they
were "reserved", so that you could put a sequence number on your cards.
That worked a little better for putting them back into order than the
diagonal felt-tip marker lines.
Most? FORTRAN coding sheets explicitly included those columns, so that you
could specify to the keypunchers what you wanted there.
And 1-5 for statement numbers and 6 for continuation,
so the actual
statement area was 66 columns if you didn't count the label field.
FORTRAN
without the label field??
The CDC 3290's standard configuration was 50
characters x 20 lines.
You could get an option that would give you 80 x 13. Uppercase only,
of course.
Of course. Using lower case means that you are showing off, or trying
to
whisper.