4 ms·

I'm just being sarcastic: should we also blame the computers of old for not being able to handle more than 255 characters ?

Piskvorrr 9y ago
Not really. In a barely-networked and severely resource-constrained world (kilobytes of memory, not gigabytes), this decision made sense. Shift happens.
cryptonector 9y ago
No, just developers. Of course, the use of bytes for characters goes back a long time, to times when computers had small memories and disk (and other) storage capacities. And to even before then, to the days of telexes and typewriters. It's completely understandable. But UTF-8 is genius, which is why we use it. Incidentally, ASCII was actually a multi-byte codeset... since one could combine most lower-case characters with BS (backspace) and overstrike with apostrophe, backtick, tilde, comma (for cedilles), and double-quotes (for umlauts), or with the same char for bold, or with underscore for underline. nroff(1) still uses this for bold and underscore, no?
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  I've always wondered what the concept of a "backspace" character was supposed to mean. (I tried printing it to erase a previously printed character, but that doesn't work.) I guess it's another relic of the idea that computer output goes to a printer rather than a display?
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Indeed it is. Or rather, output goes to a remote printer. Morse code - teletype (backspace appears here) - mainframe - ASCII - Unicode (you are here).
  - cryptonector 9y ago
    Yes! Terminal vendors had to explicitly support this in terminals, though maybe not just because of printers but because it's actually quite useful. Note that BS only produces overstrike when followed by certain characters (which we might term "combining" for the fun of it), while most will just change the character at that location. A tty spinner is just |BS/BS-BS\BS|BS... with some delay between each -- no overstrike there.

Piskvorrr 9y ago

Not really. In a barely-networked and severely resource-constrained world (kilobytes of memory, not gigabytes), this decision made sense. Shift happens.

cryptonector 9y ago

No, just developers. Of course, the use of bytes for characters goes back a long time, to times when computers had small memories and disk (and other) storage capacities. And to even before then, to the days of telexes and typewriters. It's completely understandable. But UTF-8 is genius, which is why we use it. Incidentally, ASCII was actually a multi-byte codeset... since one could combine most lower-case characters with BS (backspace) and overstrike with apostrophe, backtick, tilde, comma (for cedilles), and double-quotes (for umlauts), or with the same char for bold, or with underscore for underline. nroff(1) still uses this for bold and underscore, no?

thaumasiotes 9y ago
I've always wondered what the concept of a "backspace" character was supposed to mean. (I tried printing it to erase a previously printed character, but that doesn't work.) I guess it's another relic of the idea that computer output goes to a printer rather than a display?
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Indeed it is. Or rather, output goes to a remote printer. Morse code - teletype (backspace appears here) - mainframe - ASCII - Unicode (you are here).
- cryptonector 9y ago
  Yes! Terminal vendors had to explicitly support this in terminals, though maybe not just because of printers but because it's actually quite useful. Note that BS only produces overstrike when followed by certain characters (which we might term "combining" for the fun of it), while most will just change the character at that location. A tty spinner is just |BS/BS-BS\BS|BS... with some delay between each -- no overstrike there.