an odd question - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

9 Aug 2001

I think Wordstar pre-dates MS-DOS by more than a few years ;)

Gary

...
  -----Original Message-----
 From: Master of all that Sucks [mailto:vance@ikickass.org]
 Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 9:56 AM
 To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
 Subject: Re: an odd question

 Well, MS-DOS 1.0 was doing it long before WordStar.

 Peace...  Sridhar

 On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, Jeff Hellige wrote:

  on 8/9/01 9:47 AM, Dan Wright at
dtwright(a)uiuc.edu wrote:
 > not sure if this is exactly on-topic, but I figure if   anyone would know, it
  > would be this bunch...  where did the
convention of using   "^x" to represent
  > "Ctrl-x" come from?  I wonder
because you see that   convention everywhere, but
  > it's totally non-intuitave -- i.e. why
does the carat   symbol mean "hold
  > control
 > while pressing the following key"?  I think this came up   because
someone
  > pointed out that using pine the first time
was really   hard until they figured
  > out what "^" meant.  so, anyone
know where that   convention came from?

     I believe Wordstar used to display the control   sequences for cut and
  pasting and other block move type commands in
that format   in it's menus.
  I'm almost positive that versions of Worstar
I was using on   XT-clones in the
  mid-80's were like that.  At the time, quite
a large number   of text editors,
  including those included with programs such as
TurboBasic,   used the Wordstar
  commands and conventions as well.

     Jeff