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Provide more sources and reword some sections.
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57
readme.rst
57
readme.rst
@@ -366,23 +366,30 @@ Unix was case-sensitive because Multics was case-sensitive.
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Multics was case-sensitive because the ASCII standard
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included both an uppercase and a lowercase alphabet. [#Multics_case_sensitive]_
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Why was ASCII case-sensitive?
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It nearly wasn't.
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Why did ASCII do this?
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It was a close call, and almost didn't happen.
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Telegraphy codes used uppercase only,
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or at least did not distinguish upper and lowercase.
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Even ITA2, an international standard from 1930,
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used a 5-bit code with a shift to switch between letters and figures,
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but not upper and lowercase. [#ITA2]_
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Similarly, punched cards used uppercase letters only.
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Early telegraphy codes did not distinguish upper and lowercase
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because it would have slowed transmission speeds prohibitively.
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Encodings with different bit patterns for uppercase and lowercase
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had been proposed as early as 1959, [#Bemer_1959]_
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though they were not widely implemented.
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For example, the IBM 7030 "Stretch" supercomputer used an 8-bit encoding
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that included interleaved uppercase and lowercase alphabets,
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and it was used at Los Alamos in 1961.
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and was used at Los Alamos as early as 1961.
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[#Stretch_supercomputer]_
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The ASCII committee concluded that 6-bit encodings (64 bit patterns)
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Early on, ASCII committee concluded that 6-bit encodings (64 bit patterns)
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were insufficient to include both control characters and special characters
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in addition to the required 26 alphabetics and 10 numerics,
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so they decided to use a 7-bit code.
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However, ASCII was designed to include a useful 6-bit subset,
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which could only include single alphabet.
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The consideration of a 6-bit, 64-character graphic subset was important
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to the standards committee. If the ultimate decision was that columns 6
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@@ -412,15 +419,22 @@ wanted to reserve the remaining space for control characters.
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--- Ibid, p.232
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Thought the comittee first formed in 1961,
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it wasn't until late 1963 that they finally agreed to include a lowercase alphabet.
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Though the comittee first formed in 1961,
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it wasn't until late 1963 that they finally agreed to include a lowercase alphabet,
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largely because of the influence of the
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International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT).
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At the first meeting of ISO/TC97/SC@ in 1963 October 29-31, a resolu-
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At the first meeting of ISO/TC97/SC2 in 1963 October 29-31, a resolu-
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tion was passed that the lower-case alphabet should be assigned to
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columns 6 and 7.
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--- Ibid, p. 246
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The ISO proposal, though, did not include the lower case alphabet and the
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five accent marks that the CCITT considered essential.
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--- Eric Fisher, "The Evolution of Character Codes, 1874-1968", p.22
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Why is it useful for filenames to include upper and lowercase?
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It can make filenames more intelligible,
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@@ -559,7 +573,22 @@ For example, the Linux port of the `Unity engine`_ has `issues with case-sensiti
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Everything in Multics is case sensitive; Multics permits use of the full
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upper and lower case ASCII character set.
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http://www.multicians.org/mgc.html
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Multics command names and programming languages use lowercase by
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convention, but users are free to use uppercase letters in path names,
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identifiers, user names, etc.
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http://www.multicians.org/mgc.html#commandlanguage
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Multics was one of the first systems to use upper and lower case letters
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freely.
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http://www.multicians.org/mga.html#ASCII
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Obviously, BCD had no lower-case characters, and Multics did not use BCD
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at all, except to output log and crash and tape mount messages from ring
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0 to the primitive Selectric operator's console.
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http://www.multicians.org/mgb.html#BCD
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Since the Multics file system distinguished between upper and lower case,
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external names had to be case sensitive, and without much discussion we
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@@ -567,6 +596,14 @@ For example, the Linux port of the `Unity engine`_ has `issues with case-sensiti
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http://www.multicians.org/pl1.html
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.. [#ITA2]
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See p. 9 of "The Evolution of Character Codes, 1874-1968", Eric Fisher.
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http://trafficways.org/ascii/ascii.pdf
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https://github.com/ericfischer/ascii
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.. [#Bemer_1959]
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Simple pattern of correspondence should exist between codes assigned to
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