Re: lynx-dev screen widths

[dickey]

> 
> On Fri, Apr 16, 1999 at 12:17:18PM -0400, address@hidden wrote: 
> >  
> > no - 80 (132 column terminals weren't common until the early 80's -- around 
> > the time that punchcards went away) 
>  
> I don't know about terminals, but I believe 132 column *printers* were 

printers, yes, terminals no (there's a real difference ;-).
printer widths were pretty standard also, I believe because of the paper sizes,
and the limited range of character spacing -
and _that_ didn't change until the early 80's when laser printers became common,
so we could have more variations than switching lines/inch between 6 and 8.

wide terminals didn't hit the street until the word processing industry
boomed at the end of the 70's, and then they were a niche market until the
early 80's (a side effect of the IBM PC, some would argue).

(but that's just my first-hand experience ;-)

> very much the norm in the 70's.  Since terminals were primarily for input, 
> and input was originally done with punched cards, it was logical to make 
> the terminals 80 columns, but printers were for output, and there was no 
> reason to duplicate the width of the punched card.  (Yes, I know that the 
> terminals were also for output, but that was mostly for the programmer's 
> benefit--reports and such generally used 132 columns.) 
>  
> Chuck 


-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
address@hidden
http://www.clark.net/pub/dickey