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| ▲ | Joker_vD 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | "Since forever" as in, "since the start of electronic computing"; we started printing the programs out on paper almost immediately. The 132 columns comes from the IBM's ancient line printers (circa 1957); most of other manufacturers followed the suit, and even the glass ttys routinely had 132-column mode (for VT100 you had to buy a RAM extension, for later models it was just there, I believe). My point is, most of the people did understand, back even in the sixties, that 80-columns wide screen is tiny, especially for reading the source code. | |
| ▲ | dcminter 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Printers aside the VT220 terminal from DEC had a 132 column mode. Probably it was aping a standard printer column count. Most of the time we used the 80 column mode as it was far more readable on what was quite a small screen. | | |
| ▲ | guenthert 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Not only a small screen by modern standards, but the hardware lacked the needed resolution. The marketing brochure claims a 10x10 dot matrix. That will be for the 80 column mode. That works out to respectable 800 pixel horizontally, barely sufficient 6x10 pixel in 132 column mode. There was even a double-high, double-width mode for easier reading ;-) Interesting here perhaps is that even back then it was recognized, that for different situations, different display modes were of advantage. | | |
| ▲ | dcminter 4 days ago | parent [-] | | > There was even a double-high, double-width mode for easier reading I'd forgotten that; now that waa a fugly font. I don't think anyone ever used it (aside from the "Setup" banner on the settings screen) I think the low pixel count was rather mitigated by the persistence of phospher though - there's reproductions of the fonts that had to take this into account; see the stuff about font stretching here: https://vt100.net/dec/vt220/glyphs |
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| ▲ | bloak 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The IBM 1403 line printer, apparently. |
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