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[Python-Dev] PEP 259: Omit printing newline after newline

Alex Martelli aleaxit at yahoo.com
Tue Jun 12 11:27:47 EDT 2001 
"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9g57h5$7bkkg$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
>
> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:9g5486016t4 at enews2.newsguy.com...
> <snip>
> > Those guys and gals have never seen a 'printing terminal',
>
> Totally off topic:
>
> But this reminds me of remotely debugging an HP 2000 Basic app designed to
> run on a  Hazeltine 1500 block mode terminal.  We followed the code while
> the user talked us through his steps.  No way was this happening.  We
asked
> him to go slower, and tell _everything_ he did.  Only when he got to "...
> then I scroll the paper back..." did we figure out he was on a TI810 hard
> copy terminal.  ;-)

I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for printing terminals,
most particularly the LA36 Decwriter which saved my a**e back
when I was working on my thesis.  We had been working for months,
porting a partial APL-coded prototype (originally coded on a
rock-solid IBM 370 system which we could only access remotely)
to a new, yet-unstable VAX 11/780 (Fortran and assembler) -- and
for reasons I can only describe as somewhat fetishistic I kept
all of the interactive-session printouts (sometimes being a pack
rat helps...).  One day, the system disks died... and the tape
drives had not been installed yet!  POOF, all of our work gone,
just like that.  All EXCEPT the paper trail, that is... in less
than a week (a somewhat frantic one:-), it was all back in the
machine again (so I did eventually manage to get my "Laurea"!-).

Some months later, I was working for IBM Research, a well-funded
place with glass terminals, and the somewhat-peeved machine-room
operator wanted to know how come I was printing out session logs
twice daily and never recycling the paper... (admittedly, a dead
disk on a production machine WAS an unknown occurrence there, AND,
just in case, tape backups WERE religiously kept, but...:-).

Eventually I did have to accept that I couldn't keep clogging my
office with that much paper, but I was really on edge for a
while when I did stop...:-)


Alex
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