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