4 ms·

TLDR, you combine/precede naked accent characters with the backspace character on your output device (probably a printer) to get accented characters.

Dylan16807 2y ago
If you focus on printers I think you're missing the point of the question. It's about why it's in this character set made for interactive use on a screen. Printers are an obvious answer for a different question.
- jandrese 2y ago
  Early computers didn't have screens. Their output was via typewriters called teletypes.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    ISO 8859-1 did not exist back then. Edit: Its 1983 predecessor that added accented characters was made for the VT220, and it used a buffer of 8 bit character codes, no way to combine. (Some of those terminals could be sent a limited number of custom characters to store in RAM, but that's a very different mechanism as far as I can tell.) Edit 2: I made an error before, the naked accents were not in the predecessor, they were even newer.
- bhaak 2y ago
  Why? Back in the day you could output a text file directly onto the printer and it would print, possibly interpreting control characters like backspace or carriage return to overwrite existing characters. For that, the printer would also need to interpret the characters in the correct character set.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    But who would design a character set that only works properly on printers in 1985? Hence the question of whether and which operating systems properly supported that kind of use.
    - akira2501 2y ago
      We didn't start putting computers on everyone's desk until the mid 90s. Prior to that printed output dominated businesses.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        It's still a pretty crazy idea to add something that only works on printers at that time. It's very much worth asking about OS support, and "it's there because printers" leaves a lot of story untold, it's not a sufficient answer.
        akira2501 2y ago
        We did printing with heads on specialized form paper. If you wanted to change the font you opened up the printer, took out the head, and replaced it with a new head. The character set standard defined how the head was physically manufactured. You want all the printers in your fleet to produce identical output. In 1985 "OS Support" meant picking up the phone and talking to the vendor directly.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      A "printer" in 1985 wasn't necessarily a PostScript raster printer. Presumably.
    - bhaak 2y ago
      It's not "only". A similar question is why does ASCII have a control character for ringing a bell? The answer is that the character sets were designed with specific hardware in mind and often with backwards compatibility. The accented characters were in use for typewriter and printer with a typewriter like interface or even hardware.
    - chuckadams 2y ago
      > But who would design a character set that only works properly on printers in 1985? Someone in 1985 who has mostly printers. ASCII dates from the 70’s.

Dylan16807 2y ago

If you focus on printers I think you're missing the point of the question. It's about why it's in this character set made for interactive use on a screen. Printers are an obvious answer for a different question.

jandrese 2y ago
Early computers didn't have screens. Their output was via typewriters called teletypes.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  ISO 8859-1 did not exist back then. Edit: Its 1983 predecessor that added accented characters was made for the VT220, and it used a buffer of 8 bit character codes, no way to combine. (Some of those terminals could be sent a limited number of custom characters to store in RAM, but that's a very different mechanism as far as I can tell.) Edit 2: I made an error before, the naked accents were not in the predecessor, they were even newer.
bhaak 2y ago
Why? Back in the day you could output a text file directly onto the printer and it would print, possibly interpreting control characters like backspace or carriage return to overwrite existing characters. For that, the printer would also need to interpret the characters in the correct character set.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  But who would design a character set that only works properly on printers in 1985? Hence the question of whether and which operating systems properly supported that kind of use.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    We didn't start putting computers on everyone's desk until the mid 90s. Prior to that printed output dominated businesses.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      It's still a pretty crazy idea to add something that only works on printers at that time. It's very much worth asking about OS support, and "it's there because printers" leaves a lot of story untold, it's not a sufficient answer.
      - akira2501 2y ago
        We did printing with heads on specialized form paper. If you wanted to change the font you opened up the printer, took out the head, and replaced it with a new head. The character set standard defined how the head was physically manufactured. You want all the printers in your fleet to produce identical output. In 1985 "OS Support" meant picking up the phone and talking to the vendor directly.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    A "printer" in 1985 wasn't necessarily a PostScript raster printer. Presumably.
  - bhaak 2y ago
    It's not "only". A similar question is why does ASCII have a control character for ringing a bell? The answer is that the character sets were designed with specific hardware in mind and often with backwards compatibility. The accented characters were in use for typewriter and printer with a typewriter like interface or even hardware.
  - chuckadams 2y ago
    > But who would design a character set that only works properly on printers in 1985? Someone in 1985 who has mostly printers. ASCII dates from the 70’s.