[ih] Fwd: Reporter query on the history of greater-than in quoted replies

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 04/01/2017 06:25, Bill Ricker wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 11:38 AM, Scott Brim <scott.brim at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> How were tabs shown (if shown) on early terminals?

Surely at the relevant time, the Ur-terminal was still the ASR33? The tab
was still explicitly "move to the next tab stop" (which could be anywhere).

There was no separate tab key on the ASR33, iirc. You could use CTRL/I.

On the VT05 there was a tab key, and there were preset tab stops every 8 places.

I don't recall any convention of using > to represent tab.

    Brian

> 
> ​I vaguely recall some terminals, maybe WECO TTYs?, using arrows (single
> char wide) -> and <- ​ for TAB and BS?
> Are you suggesting back-formation from that to >  is plausible ?
> 
> ( FWIW Glenn F is a good guy, and as tech savvy as tech reporter should be.
> I believe he does his own programming on his hobby websites. )
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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