Re: lynx-dev TEXTAREA/ctrl-G (was: your 2 weeks)

[David Woolley]

> 
> I think ctrl-G would work okay, the main use I know for it is to make beepy
> noises with 'fortune'.  

> I don't know any MSwin apps that depend on it;  its 'standard' behavior in 
> DOS 
> is also to make beepy noises.

You say those as though the behaviour is abnormal, when, in fact, it is the
only correct behaviour in ASCII!  ^G is "sound the teletype bell".  (The
use of ^L for a spoiler separator is because it is really form feed.)
Generally, though, this is only of historical significance, as there is
a very long history of using control characters as mnemonic commands, rather
than for their true purposes.  (If you are wondering, ^C is "end of text",
and divides the data of a message from the checksum (if any). Escape,
is there to extend the control codes by being used as a prefix for other
codes, never as an isolated character.)