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I suddenly realized what made reading old Linux books feel so nostalgic - in at least one of the books I still have, the terminal commands were all printed usin

I suddenly realized what made reading old Linux books feel so nostalgic - in at least one of the books I still have, the terminal commands were all printed using broken bars for pipe, etc. You really don’t see that nowadays, but I remember it from text-based browsing, horizontal nav bars often used bar/pipe characters to separate links, and still probably do in footers and dusty corners...

taneq 7y ago
If you really want to feel oldschool, try writing crosses through your zeroes as well (to distinguish them from O's).
- Tomte 7y ago
  I do, when writing by hand (and only in the job), but I'm not feeling about the crossed 0 in a computer font the same way as about the broken pipe.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Or even older school, use a capitol P for a question mark. Or if you were fancy, a P with a / through it.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Is that a rudimentary typewriter thing?
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      Teletype.
burfog 7y ago
Unicode killed it. They introduced a non-ASCII broken bar, and they made the ASCII bar explicitly non-broken. Fonts created in the Unicode era follow Unicode. I will never forgive Unicode for this abomination. By defining Unicode mappings, they also replaced the β in MS-DOS fonts with a ß. Evidently they like Germans more than they like Greeks and mathematics. This too is an abomination. Old documents are now screwed up.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > Unicode killed it. They introduced a non-ASCII broken bar, and they made the ASCII bar explicitly non-broken. ... I will never forgive Unicode for this abomination. I'm more upset that they allowed implementers to put lettuce on the bagel unicode emoji. Bagels are for carbs, fat, and salt, lettuce has no place. An abomination.
  - snazz 7y ago
    Who gets to decide about those kinds of things? (Also, cheese on Google’s burgers....) Is it the implementation’s choice so long as it resembles the description?
    - Tomte 7y ago
      Yes, Unicode specifically does not standardize the look of a glyph.
couchand 7y ago
> horizontal nav bars often used bar/pipe characters to separate links, and still probably do in footers and dusty corners... You mean like in the HN footer?

taneq 7y ago

If you really want to feel oldschool, try writing crosses through your zeroes as well (to distinguish them from O's).

Tomte 7y ago
I do, when writing by hand (and only in the job), but I'm not feeling about the crossed 0 in a computer font the same way as about the broken pipe.
reaperducer 7y ago
Or even older school, use a capitol P for a question mark. Or if you were fancy, a P with a / through it.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Is that a rudimentary typewriter thing?
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    Teletype.

burfog 7y ago

Unicode killed it. They introduced a non-ASCII broken bar, and they made the ASCII bar explicitly non-broken. Fonts created in the Unicode era follow Unicode. I will never forgive Unicode for this abomination. By defining Unicode mappings, they also replaced the β in MS-DOS fonts with a ß. Evidently they like Germans more than they like Greeks and mathematics. This too is an abomination. Old documents are now screwed up.

speedplane 7y ago
> Unicode killed it. They introduced a non-ASCII broken bar, and they made the ASCII bar explicitly non-broken. ... I will never forgive Unicode for this abomination. I'm more upset that they allowed implementers to put lettuce on the bagel unicode emoji. Bagels are for carbs, fat, and salt, lettuce has no place. An abomination.
- snazz 7y ago
  Who gets to decide about those kinds of things? (Also, cheese on Google’s burgers....) Is it the implementation’s choice so long as it resembles the description?
  - Tomte 7y ago
    Yes, Unicode specifically does not standardize the look of a glyph.

couchand 7y ago

> horizontal nav bars often used bar/pipe characters to separate links, and still probably do in footers and dusty corners... You mean like in the HN footer?