Fortran was originally designed to be consistent with the standard
ASA conventions for printed files and to be independent of the
underlying character set representation. That meant that list
directed formatting was required to begin each line with a space
(just in case it were to be printed on an ASA printer). This is
also why many fortran programs routinely insert spaces at the
beginning of even lines printed with explicit formats (e.g. formats
begin with 1x, or 1H , or ' ', or otherwise ensure that there will
be a blank space at the beginning). Unix and C were developed after
1969, so they broke with standards compliance and used the idea of
embedded control characters using the ASCII character set. Over
time, that convention (with some ambiguity about exactly how lines
are terminated, CR, CR+LF, or LF) replaced the ASA format first as
the de facto standard, and later as the actual standard (e.g. for
FTP file transfers and other contexts).
That, and the transition from line at a time printers, such as
chain, train, and drum printers, to character at a time printers
or printers connected up through a serial line. (The DECwriter
and daisy wheel printers were popular hard copy output devices
for some years.)
To an IBM 1403 printer, CR and LF are just like any other
character that can be printed in a given column, though usually
they don't print anything. (I have done it before, as character
constants in Fortran programs.)
Mostly for compatibility reasons, i.e. historical reasons, modern
fortran standards have continued to require the space at the
beginning of each line in list directed output.
Re: Xerox 7760 on DCPS? ... I guess I'll check again about 7 -> 8 bit ASCII... So the queues have to have names ... The printers are not LAT ... I have some postscript code that does character re-encoding (dates back ... (comp.os.vms)
Printer problem ... I have a lot of Printers on our VMS 7.2-1 system, ... Oracle and no character based forms in later versions, ... It says load paper in tray 1, ... it overrides and takes from the bulk paper casette.... (comp.os.vms)
Re: long free source form lines ... used as a line length on many other printers.... print a source listing file, with the lines numbered so that ... the nesting structure, ... If 132 character source lines are allowed, ... (comp.lang.fortran)
Re: String and escape characters ... old daysof plaintext printers) triggered the printer to skip to next ... this character is generally used to hide spoilers: ... The hexcode of that char is 0x0C, ... (comp.lang.java.programmer)
Re: cariage control (was IMPLICIT NONE (F2k8+/-)) ... It was just a description of how printers worked (according to a separate ASA standard) independent of language considerations. ... I'm afraid it was long enough before my time that I can't explain what it was even doing in the Fortran standard at all. ... Note that unlike ASA carriage control the movement ... (comp.lang.fortran)
