ASCII/ANSI GUI book

[SlideRule]

An interesting excerpt from That Powerful ESCAPE Character -- Key and Sequences

"IS THE ESCAPE SEQUENCE THAT IMPORTANT?

Care to speculate upon what the world would be like now if:
• the escape sequence principle had not been created? or
• if one had the power to now withdraw the escape sequence idea from usage? (IBM did not seek a patent; indeed, a $300 million dollar suit against IBM was unsuccessful because the escape sequence had been put into the public domain)

The following list is illustrative but incomplete. Its purpose is to show how different the world would have been without ESCAPE! Think of your own input to the list.
Here are some things one would miss:
• Video computer monitors (as on personal computers) are gone. With no escape sequences to move cursors, change foreground and background colors, set blinking or inverse, etc., we are back to Teletypewriters and other mechanical aids.
• Writers are back to typewriters, for Word Processing is no more.
• No more making one's own artwork or personal greeting cards.
• Computer graphics hardly exist. No more pictures of a rotating auto chassis, no visual engineering design, no CAD (computer- aided design) for buildings, kitchens, highways, etc.
• No laser printers, whose manuals show hundreds of escape sequences used for their control and operation.
• Various phone services are gone, like checking a bank balance by typing in the account number followed by # and/or *, for these act as escape sequences to the bank computer.
• Other screen applications are gone or reduced in functionality. Airline reservations, for example (we might have to revert to inflexible and published schedules and fares -- which might not be an all-bad idea!).
• Medicine reverts. No nurse's video stations, displays for treadmills, etc.
• Forget air traffic control as we know it now, and all the intelligent displays in submarines and fighter planes.
• Japan, Korea, and China are back to brushwork and linotype fonts for their character sets. The relationship to ASCII is gone.
• Photocomposition cannot shift to subsets of the various symbols of the world, in various sizes, fonts, rotation, etc. Books will thus be more expensive, and rarer.
• And -- No Internet or Web as they are now!"

BEST!
SlideRule