+Ernmark Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 ..just wondering - has anyone ever typed in the description info normally (both UPPER & lower case) & submitted (accidentally or on purpose) & found whether it rejects/accepts/changes the text ? I know it "corrects" the PID to upper case at the top of the fom. I've always diligently switched back & forth to caps lock, but wondered what would happen if a lower case slipped thru....hmmmm. Quote
+Black Dog Trackers Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 I always use lower case except for the PID, the beginning of sentences, compass directions, etc. I HAVE NEVER SUBMITTED ANYTHING TO THE NGS LIKE THIS. I assume they use some sort of automatic case-changing software on submissions. Quote
+BuckBrooke Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 I don't think it matters what case you put your text in. Upper case, lower case or mixed, I've tried them all and it comes out the same. Typing normally is probably easier for Deb, unless of course it uppercases everything between your submission and Deb's email. Quote
+Black Dog Trackers Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 It's odd how some mainframes are still stuck in that ancient upper-case-only mode. Oops, do people still say "mainframe"? Maybe it's a server now. Quote
Bill93 Posted September 29, 2006 Posted September 29, 2006 The all-CAPS is left over from two factors in earlier hardware. The original keypunches (for those paper cards) and teletypes (used for input on some machines) didn't have any lower case characters. And the printers had such poor resolution that the all-caps helped readability. With modern hardware this seems to me to be a case of "we've always done it that way". Quote
+Ernmark Posted September 29, 2006 Author Posted September 29, 2006 ..gosh - I remember those keypunches! I had a COBOL course once in college (disclaimer - I was REALLY young at the time...and the machines were replaced a year or 2 later) & remember having a program go into a 'loop' when one of the cards got bent & the reader stopped - it was really 'fun' watching the monitor as your program (identified of course by your last name) started using up the mainframe's resources until it was reset... ..end of flashback.. Thanks for the info - I won't worry about messing up the Caps anymore and will direct all efforts to spelling & clarity Quote
mloser Posted September 29, 2006 Posted September 29, 2006 Bill93, I think the reason keypunches didn't have upper case was because the punch cards would not have allowed enough codes (holes) to encode both upper and lower case, but I don't have any punch cards handy so I can't verify that. Also, data entry was just that back then--heads down data entry, and those in charge most likely saw no reason to bother with upper and lower case. In there minds it would have slowed down entry and served no purpose. Just being able to computerize that data was enough. Let's not go crazy! Another reason printing upper and lower case would have been troublesome is physical limitations on the printers. Many early printers were band or chain printers, where a spinning band with the letters stamped or cast on it spun past the paper and small hammers hit the appropriate letter as is passed the spot where it was to be printed. Having more letters available for printing would complicate, and even worse, slow down that process. Finally, upper and lower case letters are coded differently in computers (using what is called ASCII code)--lower case "a" is represented by "97" and upper case "A" by "65". While our human brains can easily determine that they are the same letter, computers had no such idea, and sorting data purely by the coded values means that upper case would be before lower case, so the list aardvard, Allen, Ball would sort as Allen, Ball, aardvark (upper case "B" is value "66"). Definitely not the way we want things sorted. Once the computer world acknowledged the existence of lower case letter, but before Unix and Linux (yeah, yeah, and then Windows) allowed the easy conversion of strings to different cases and the recognition of letters as the same value no matter what the case, sorting required an interermediate step to convert the letters to one case. Ahh, the days of batch programming! I suspect one more reason things are still done in all uppercase is that it removes the need to think about what needs capitalization and what doesn't. So much easier, if lazy. Quote
StripeMark Posted October 2, 2006 Posted October 2, 2006 Hey watch it............ I'm still programming in COBOL on a IBM system 36! We are a dying breed Quote
mloser Posted October 2, 2006 Posted October 2, 2006 Stripmark, You are still working on a System 36? The S/36 was a dying breed in 1995, when I started programming on an AS/400! Quote
StripeMark Posted October 2, 2006 Posted October 2, 2006 Most of our work is on the AS400 now with a S/36 partition on it so it still looks and acts like the S36. We do still however have a bunch of the actual 36's sitting around here that we do development and testing on. We have a machine in almost every county office (USDA/FSA) and a handful of them are still using the original S36 as well. Quote
+rogbarn Posted October 19, 2006 Posted October 19, 2006 Hey watch it............ I'm still programming in COBOL on a IBM system 36! We are a dying breed Glad to see someone else is still COBOLing. I'm still using COBOL on several VAXx (and anything else that comes along). If anyone needs COBOL programming, I'm the one people are coming to! Of course COBOL and VAX is another combination that is disappearing fast. Quote
mloser Posted October 19, 2006 Posted October 19, 2006 Can you VAX me a copy of that? Just kidding, I know what a VAX system is, although I never worked on one. How about Data General?? Quote
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