Re: H-caret (was: McGuffey Readers in Tatari Faran)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim May" <butsuri@...>


> > :) It's a joke, you sill^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HDavid! ;) Teoh started it.
> > Remember the old control H in I think it was UNIX?  The number of
> > ^Hs equal the number of characters he's backed up over to "erase"
> > the original wording.  "Attention Deficit" rather than "Immune
> > Deficiency."  After laughing uproariously, I had to copy him, of
> > course.  :) Sorry, it was funnier unexplained!
> >
> > Sara^H^Hlly
>
> Yes... this actually used to happen, of course.
Actually, you still see it in some UNIX programs before you log into PINE.
That is if you younguns ever trucked with UNIX PINE.  If you use one of the
delete keys at the command line,  you'll get ^H characters.  I had no idea
that it comically transferred into email undeleted at one time.  How
immensely awkward!! :)

> http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/ctrlh.html
> http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=386870
Okay, I didn't know it was such a common "geek" joke.  And here I thought
Teoh was being as original as his Tatari Faran.  Sigh! ;)

> (There are probably more informative sources online, but Google won't
> search for carets)
>
> Given his age (from the Lunatic Survey), David's unlikely to have
> experienced this firsthand, and there's no reason he should be
> familiar with this bit of history.  But it's now a widely understood
> online convention for saying "First I typed this, then I thought
> better of it and typed the following".  (Usually as a deliberate joke,
> although in this case perhaps Teoh actually did type the expansion of
> AIDS when he meant ADD and found the error humourous enough to share.)
> So it's worth knowing, even if it doesn't salvage this particular
> joke.
I was joking, of course, when I called David sill^H^H^H^H.  He's anything
but.  As I said, I didn't know it was an old chestnut, not being a
gee^H^H^Hcomputer programmer myself.

Sally

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