[GreenKeys] TABS and STUFF

[jhhaynes at earthlink.net]

Horizontal tabulation was an optional feature on Model 28, and even
on Model 15.  It was not very neat, because you had to give up some
upper case character to do the tab function, and it took a repair
technician to set the tabs.  But some customers demanded it.  It
was a little cleaner in Model 35 since a character could be devoted
to it in the ASCII character set.  Model 37 was to have online settable
tabs, as many CRT terminals do.

In early days of computer terminal use, for instance with the original
Dartmouth BASIC timesharing system, a convention was established that
tabs were to be every 8 characters.  If you pressed the TAB key the
computer would convert that into the right number of spaces to move
the carriage to the next tab position.  In later timesharing systems
there was a switch so that if the terminal really had a tab function
the computer would send the tab character; otherwise it would use the
8-character column convention and simulate the tab with spaces.
Still later there were schemes to set the tabs on a terminal with
online settable tabs, but they would normally be set to the 8-character
column positions.  If you wanted them somewhere else you were pretty
much on your own.

I don't know much about word-processing software, but I wouldn't be
surprised if it still has standardized tab positions; or maybe it lets
you set the tabs as you wish.  Either way, the TAB character is probably
preserved in the original text and only converted to an actual tab or
a bunch of spaces when the material is output to a printer.

No doubt the reason you see perfect columns on encrypted matter is
simply that it is standard to transmit it as 5-letter groups.



jhhaynes at earthlink dot net