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

9 Aug 2001

I don't have the detailed history available to me now,
but --
didn't WordStar run under CP/M long before MS-DOS was created ? 

-----Original Message-----
From:	Master of all that Sucks [SMTP: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