CRLF is Wrong???
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I always knew that the CRLF came from Carriage Return and Line Feed from the days of the electronic typewriters ... but never really thought about it logically until today... In the days of electronic typewriters a Line Feed would be followed by a Carriage Return to move the line down and the return the carriage to the start of the line I have [B]never[/B] seen a typewriter do it the other way around... so why is this reversed in computing?? ... even the enter character symbol ↵ implies that the Line Feed should be done first!... I even looked up YouTube videos to double check ... and sure enough the LineFeed is done first :) Any thoughts ;P?? ... Do people agree that logically it should be done the other way around (although I would be against that since I have been conditioned to do it the other way)?? Kris
Having cut my teeth on teleprinters (Yes, I have stripped an ASR-33[^] and reassembled it from a bucket of sheet metal stampings :-O ) I can tell you that CRLF is right, LFCR is wrong. The reason for this is that the carriage return is SLOW. But it can be overlapped with the paper feed. Back in the day, most software would output "CR LF PAD PAD" to be safe. It took a bit of tuning of the dashpot to get an ASR-33 carriage to have finished bouncing with just CR LF , but it could be done. The Siemens equivalent (which made a sexy purring noise, unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof of the model 33) needed the pads, otherwise the first character of the next line would print "somewhere", generally blurred as the carriage was moving. Cheers, Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Having cut my teeth on teleprinters (Yes, I have stripped an ASR-33[^] and reassembled it from a bucket of sheet metal stampings :-O ) I can tell you that CRLF is right, LFCR is wrong. The reason for this is that the carriage return is SLOW. But it can be overlapped with the paper feed. Back in the day, most software would output "CR LF PAD PAD" to be safe. It took a bit of tuning of the dashpot to get an ASR-33 carriage to have finished bouncing with just CR LF , but it could be done. The Siemens equivalent (which made a sexy purring noise, unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof of the model 33) needed the pads, otherwise the first character of the next line would print "somewhere", generally blurred as the carriage was moving. Cheers, Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
Peter_in_2780 wrote:
unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof
I play clash of clans (skeletons are one of the participants) and I am not going to be able to get that image out of my head. Hordes of skeletons racing at each other and start shagging AAaaaaaahhhhhhh
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Peter_in_2780 wrote:
unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof
I play clash of clans (skeletons are one of the participants) and I am not going to be able to get that image out of my head. Hordes of skeletons racing at each other and start shagging AAaaaaaahhhhhhh
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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I always knew that the CRLF came from Carriage Return and Line Feed from the days of the electronic typewriters ... but never really thought about it logically until today... In the days of electronic typewriters a Line Feed would be followed by a Carriage Return to move the line down and the return the carriage to the start of the line I have [B]never[/B] seen a typewriter do it the other way around... so why is this reversed in computing?? ... even the enter character symbol ↵ implies that the Line Feed should be done first!... I even looked up YouTube videos to double check ... and sure enough the LineFeed is done first :) Any thoughts ;P?? ... Do people agree that logically it should be done the other way around (although I would be against that since I have been conditioned to do it the other way)?? Kris
You are going a bit too far back - typewrites done the LF/CR thing using human control (hand) so there were no input until the movement done. But! with teleprinters (electronically controlled) the data flows in without interruption, but the mechanical movement of the printing head still there, so the only proper form is CR/LF... The reason is that the printing head need more time to travel back to the beginning of the page than the time it takes to print a letter. That time bought by the processing of LF...
Skipper: We'll fix it. Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this? Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Peter_in_2780 wrote:
unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof
I play clash of clans (skeletons are one of the participants) and I am not going to be able to get that image out of my head. Hordes of skeletons racing at each other and start shagging AAaaaaaahhhhhhh
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
I never knew that boning had such a literal meaning.
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I never knew that boning had such a literal meaning.
Groan...
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Peter_in_2780 wrote:
unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof
I play clash of clans (skeletons are one of the participants) and I am not going to be able to get that image out of my head. Hordes of skeletons racing at each other and start shagging AAaaaaaahhhhhhh
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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I always knew that the CRLF came from Carriage Return and Line Feed from the days of the electronic typewriters ... but never really thought about it logically until today... In the days of electronic typewriters a Line Feed would be followed by a Carriage Return to move the line down and the return the carriage to the start of the line I have [B]never[/B] seen a typewriter do it the other way around... so why is this reversed in computing?? ... even the enter character symbol ↵ implies that the Line Feed should be done first!... I even looked up YouTube videos to double check ... and sure enough the LineFeed is done first :) Any thoughts ;P?? ... Do people agree that logically it should be done the other way around (although I would be against that since I have been conditioned to do it the other way)?? Kris
While I learned how to type on a Selectric in high school, at home I was relegated to a portable mechanical typewriter which was early 60s vintage. The mechanics of the carriage return would behave differently depending on both the location and force applied to the lever. If you were light of touch or applied the force towards the pivot point the CR would be first. If you were heavy handed towards the front end of the return lever the LF would have occurred first. I suppose I could track down which of my older sisters still has this museum piece to do a follow up investigation... Maybe CR becomes before LF due to the alphabetics of the code names? I don't know how well my rote knowledge would take to relearning the 0a-0d sequence
Director of Transmogrification Services Shinobi of Query Language Master of Yoda Conditional
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Having cut my teeth on teleprinters (Yes, I have stripped an ASR-33[^] and reassembled it from a bucket of sheet metal stampings :-O ) I can tell you that CRLF is right, LFCR is wrong. The reason for this is that the carriage return is SLOW. But it can be overlapped with the paper feed. Back in the day, most software would output "CR LF PAD PAD" to be safe. It took a bit of tuning of the dashpot to get an ASR-33 carriage to have finished bouncing with just CR LF , but it could be done. The Siemens equivalent (which made a sexy purring noise, unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof of the model 33) needed the pads, otherwise the first character of the next line would print "somewhere", generally blurred as the carriage was moving. Cheers, Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Having cut my teeth on teleprinters (Yes, I have stripped an ASR-33[^] and reassembled it from a bucket of sheet metal stampings :-O ) I can tell you that CRLF is right, LFCR is wrong. The reason for this is that the carriage return is SLOW. But it can be overlapped with the paper feed. Back in the day, most software would output "CR LF PAD PAD" to be safe. It took a bit of tuning of the dashpot to get an ASR-33 carriage to have finished bouncing with just CR LF , but it could be done. The Siemens equivalent (which made a sexy purring noise, unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof of the model 33) needed the pads, otherwise the first character of the next line would print "somewhere", generally blurred as the carriage was moving. Cheers, Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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I always knew that the CRLF came from Carriage Return and Line Feed from the days of the electronic typewriters ... but never really thought about it logically until today... In the days of electronic typewriters a Line Feed would be followed by a Carriage Return to move the line down and the return the carriage to the start of the line I have [B]never[/B] seen a typewriter do it the other way around... so why is this reversed in computing?? ... even the enter character symbol ↵ implies that the Line Feed should be done first!... I even looked up YouTube videos to double check ... and sure enough the LineFeed is done first :) Any thoughts ;P?? ... Do people agree that logically it should be done the other way around (although I would be against that since I have been conditioned to do it the other way)?? Kris
i00 wrote:
so why is this reversed in computing??
One reason I could suggest is because the CR by itself is useful. If one wants to 'bold' something one does a CR and then spaces out to where the bold word should be, then types the bold word again (so on top of the existing one) and then one could either do another bold word (same process) or do an immediate CRLF. Alternatively an LF by itself, arbitrarily in the middle of a line wasn't useful. Especially because if an LF was done in the middle of a line and that was the last output in the block and another block, some where else in the app, needs to print then it doesn't know where to start printing. This lead to things like always putting a CRLF at the beginning just to be sure that one 'knew' that it was at the beginning of a line and on a fresh line. So basically CR was more important than LF. [UPDATE:] Still like my guess but after reading other responses and checking my fuzzy memory I agree it was probably speed of operation between the two.
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And? (Later...) As we're talking about computing history, also consider FORTRAN -- what did it use? As I recall the first character (or was it two?) on a line indicated what to do after the Carriage Return. The discussions always allude to which system you're on, but then only mention Windows, Apple, and UNIX -- which leaves out OpenVMS, which is like totally flexible! You want CR? You got it. You want LF? You got it. You want Fortran? You got it. You want Fixed format? What size? Also, in one of the posts someone pointed to, I saw this:
Someone wrote:
it was often the "style" to have normal print lines begin with Line Feed and end with Carriage Return
That's how I prefer to read "lines" from text files -- so I know I got the whole thing.
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
As I recall the first character (or was it two?) on a line indicated what to do after the Carriage Return.
As I recall... Punch cards probably varied but the first 6 chars were for the line number. Then the continuation character in the 7th position. And it was on the line that was continuing, not on the first line.
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Having cut my teeth on teleprinters (Yes, I have stripped an ASR-33[^] and reassembled it from a bucket of sheet metal stampings :-O ) I can tell you that CRLF is right, LFCR is wrong. The reason for this is that the carriage return is SLOW. But it can be overlapped with the paper feed. Back in the day, most software would output "CR LF PAD PAD" to be safe. It took a bit of tuning of the dashpot to get an ASR-33 carriage to have finished bouncing with just CR LF , but it could be done. The Siemens equivalent (which made a sexy purring noise, unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof of the model 33) needed the pads, otherwise the first character of the next line would print "somewhere", generally blurred as the carriage was moving. Cheers, Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
Peter_in_2780 wrote:
The reason for this is that the carriage return is SLOW. But it can be overlapped with the paper feed.
Seems like I recall hearing an explanation like that. From experience I know LF is 'fast'. Fast enough that one could make the paper basically shoot up like a fountain from the TTY33. Operators really loved it when the users discovered that and how to send messages to the operators.
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Peter_in_2780 wrote:
The reason for this is that the carriage return is SLOW. But it can be overlapped with the paper feed.
Seems like I recall hearing an explanation like that. From experience I know LF is 'fast'. Fast enough that one could make the paper basically shoot up like a fountain from the TTY33. Operators really loved it when the users discovered that and how to send messages to the operators.
Yeah, FF (form feed) and VT (vertical tab) could spit paper fast. The basis of several pranks.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
