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From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver
Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers
Subject: $, semiology, ASCII, WAITS, SAIL
Message-ID: <1187@uw-beaver>
Date: Sun, 19-May-85 18:51:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.1187
Posted: Sun May 19 18:51:38 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 21-May-85 05:42:38 EDT
Sender: daemon@uw-beaver
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 39

From: Chuck Bigelow <CAB@SU-AI.ARPA>

Les:
The $ appended to many of my messages is purely a meaningless
artifact derived from the arbitrary assignment of ASCII symbols
to the highly obscure "quote" mode of the `non-edit' display
mode of the arcane WAITS operating system of the SAIL computer system
which I log onto remotely from a primitive Heath/Zenith terminal. 
When I send a mail message by typing "escape - control - `w' - control -
`j' as recommended in the SAIL "Monitor Command Manual" (a masterpiece
of obfuscational prose with text layout in the "delerium tremens" 
typographic style beloved by many computer document designers) the mail
gets sent with the spurious `$' that you have noted. It is not a SYMBOL
of anything, though it is an INDEX of my lack of SAIL/WAITS erudition.
The `$' doesn't appear when I send mail from a Stanford Data Disk, nor
when I used to send mail from the remote Data Media. Unfortunately,
the Data Media was stolen from my San Francisco studio by some
enterprising degenerate drug-addict burglar who thought it might be
a valuable personal computer and who probably tossed it into the Bay
when it turned out to be a highly specialized Arificial Intelligence
terminal usable with only one computer system, and more or less useless
for playing games, except the kind that are designed to reward the
winner with DARPA grants. 

Dan Mills, following your query, discovered that the "escape" part of
the controlsequence can be left off, without apparently voiding the
mail command. Maybe you, Les, could enlighten me further about SAIL
sometime in person at Stanford.

Since the question is raised, I append the disclaimer that I have
been a paid consultant to Adobe, Imagen, DEC, and other firms that
manufacture laser printers, though presently all of my non-academic
time (and I mean ALL) is spent designing digital typefaces in
collaboration with Kris Holmes. 

Cheers,
Chuck

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