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In article <>,
Brian Inglis <> wrote:
>On Tue, 08 Jul 03 12:43:14 GMT in alt.folklore.computers,
> wrote:
>
>>In article < >,
>> (Tim Shoppa) wrote:
>><snip>
>>
>>>Remember the Dilbert where PHB complains that his programmers are using
>>>way too many semicolons?
>>
>>All RIGHT! That's a good PHB. It was so difficult to distinguish
>>between a semicolon and a colon on the listings.
>
>That's a lousy printer operator: the ribbon should have been
>flipped end around long before it got to that stage.
>(That's the old equivalent of shaking a laser toner cartridge.)
>You also wouldn't be able to differentiate between commas and
>dots, some apostrophes and quotes, maybe bars and bangs, possibly
>parens brackets and braces, if you had and used them.

Yep. I know it was due to lousy print quality. However, I firmly
believed that lousy print quality should have been a slight
constraint in designs.

Nowadays, we have great print quality; now, it's my eyesight that
smudges the pixels. And it still should be a slight contraint in
designs. Distinguishing characters, no matter what the display,
has to be a first consideration that is usually forgotten by
the time the design takes its first evolution. Just because
it's forgotten does not mean that it's no longer an implicit
assumption.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 08:29:14 GMT, Brian Inglis
<> wrote:

> That's a lousy printer operator: the ribbon should have been
> flipped end around long before it got to that stage.
> (That's the old equivalent of shaking a laser toner cartridge.)
> You also wouldn't be able to differentiate between commas and
> dots, some apostrophes and quotes, maybe bars and bangs, possibly
> parens brackets and braces, if you had and used them.

On Sunday last, having finally fixed my bike after two years of
non-use, I wandered off to Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, where there
was (and still is) an exhibition of items from its collection of
purchases from the 1960s and early 1970s.

In the last room (of 32, or thereabouts) there were many May 1968 and
anti-Vietnam-war posters, some of them strikingly apt given current
events, plus some others dedicated to apparently 'minor' issues.

Among the latter were two posters printed on [now I have forgotten the
English word for this type of paper, but it has tractor holes along
both sides, and is flimsy, and has horizontal perforations every now
and then] paper, with a silk-screeened slogan advocating recycling on
the supposedly blank side.

The posters were under glass, but I could still see the FORTRAN
listings on the other side of them. Nice (from both of my points of
view).

Anyway, to return to the post I am commenting to, the commas on the
listings I saw (viewed from the back, from the viewpoint of the person
who originally instructed the computer to print them) lacked tails. I
expect that this is probably cause for a law suit nowadays, where
everything is perfect and, if something turns out not to be perfect
then it must be the fault of someone who is LIABLE!

Impact ribbons cost money, you know. Whether you replace them or not.

The exhibition to which I refer is scheduled to carry on until the end
of the year, should anyone else wish to view it. My favourite exhibit
was the TV Buddha. Made me giggle for at least five minutes, in spite
of it being nearly thirty years old and part of it being in
monochrome.

Giles.

> Among the latter were two posters printed on [now I have forgotten the
> English word for this type of paper, but it has tractor holes along
> both sides, and is flimsy, and has horizontal perforations every now
> and then] paper, with a silk-screeened slogan advocating recycling on
> the supposedly blank side.

You are thinking of fanfold and/or leporello.
Leporello comes probably from the operette figure, who in a scene reads a
list of his masters "conquests", and as there are about 1000 names, he had
to fold it in some way.
Nice touch of folklore, I think

Nico

Nico de Jong wrote:
>
> > Among the latter were two posters printed on [now I have forgotten the
> > English word for this type of paper, but it has tractor holes along
> > both sides, and is flimsy, and has horizontal perforations every now
> > and then] paper, with a silk-screeened slogan advocating recycling on
> > the supposedly blank side.
>
> You are thinking of fanfold and/or leporello.
> Leporello comes probably from the operette figure, who in a scene reads a
> list of his masters "conquests", and as there are about 1000 names, he had
> to fold it in some way.

You're off by one order of (binary) magnitude:

640 In Italia sei cento e quaranta,
231 In Alemagna due cento e trent'una,
100 Cento in Francia,
91 in Turchia novent'una,
1003 Ma in Ispagna, son giá mille e tre!
====
2065

I once performed this "catalog aria" in an extrememly low-budget
production. As a sight gag, I handed poor Donna Elvira the "non
piccolo libro," turned a couple pages for her while she registered
disbelief and horror, opened up a page as if to show her the
Playboy centerfold, and then strolled clear across the stage from
down left to down right -- still grasping the paper, with forty
feet of fan-fold unfurling as I went ...

Cheap productions, cheap gags. But, I think, a perfect
justification for the term "leporello" applied to fan-fold paper!

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