>Is "-" part of the ASA standard or is it an IBMism? --
Peter Hunkeler
>It's pretty hard to find a definitive document. I'd have greater trust in one
>that wasn't published by IBM.
While reading RFC 959 (FTP) for some other reasons, I stumbled across the
following text:
<Quote>3.1.1.5.2. CARRIAGE CONTROL (ASA)
The file contains ASA (FORTRAN) vertical format control
characters. (See RFC 740 Appendix C; and Communications
of the ACM, Vol. 7, No. 10, p. 606, October 1964.) In a
line or a record formatted according to the ASA Standard,
the first character is not to be printed. Instead, it
should be used to determine the vertical movement of the
paper which should take place before the rest of the
record is printed.
The ASA Standard specifies the following control
characters:
Character Vertical Spacing
blank Move paper up one line
0 Move paper up two lines
1 Move paper to top of next page
+ No movement, i.e., overprint
</Quote>
Then looking at RFC 740 (NETRJS) I read in appendix C
<Quote> Carriage Control
The carriage control characters sent in a printer channel by NETRJS
conform to IBM's extended USASI code, defined by the following table:
CODE ACTION BEFORE WRITING RECORD
---- ----------------------------
Blank Space one line before printing
0 Space two lines before printing
- Space three lines before printing
+ Suppress space before printing
1 Skip to channel 1
2 Skip to channel 2
3 Skip to channel 3
4 Skip to channel 4
5 Skip to channel 5
6 Skip to channel 6
7 Skip to channel 7
8 Skip to channel 8
9 Skip to channel 9
A Skip to channel 10
B Skip to channel 11
C Skip to channel 12
</Quote>
So, I conclude that the "-" indeed is an IBM extension.
--
Peter Hunkeler
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