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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!dave
From: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman)
Newsgroups: net.std
Subject: Re: How to store video attributes in a text file - VT-100 format OK?
Message-ID: <4136@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-May-84 11:04:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.4136
Posted: Thu May  3 11:04:12 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 3-May-84 11:14:45 EDT
References: <1719@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Organization: The Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 42

~|  From: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
~|  					  One reason I can think for using
~|  ASCII graphic characters rather than escape sequences is that they can
~|  have more mnemonic value; ANSI control codes are almost all pretty
~|  arbitrary.  Remember, everyone who writes your text files is going to
~|  have to know these sequences. 

Most people will only have to know about 3 things - ESC[4m to underline,
ESC[7m to highlight, ESC[m to turn off both. But it's a valid point.

~|  				I also think that this form will be
~|  easier to edit, since you will see the characters, not the effects
~|  (although you indicated that you like seeing the effect as you edit).

It's important to me to see the effect as I edit (to the point where,
if I do go with some other format, I'd likely add an option to my
editor to do the conversion on printing). Layout of text on the line
is crucial, in my view, to the information being presented in a
comfortable format for the student. So I need to know exactly how
long a line will be (relative to others in the paragraph, etc.).
My paragraphs are usually very short (3-4 lines), and I don't use
a formatter for this reason.

~|  
~|  I'm not sure I like your implementation scheme, though.  Rather than
~|  modifying putc you should write a filter, and make all the programs do
~|  their output through the filter.  Of course, you said you wanted to do
~|  this without modifying any of the existing programs, so you are sort of
~|  stuck with your idea.

Well, I don't mind a global modification to existing programs such as
changing printf() calls to myprintf() calls, but I don't want to have
to do a huge amount of conversion work. If by "filter" you mean a
separate process, I definitely don't want that extra overhead; if
you mean an output conversion routine, that's essentially what I'm
doing.


Dave Sherman
-- 
 dave at Toronto (CSnet)
 {allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsrgv!dave