RFC 135 (rfc135) - Page 1 of 3

Response to NWG/RFC 110

Network Working Group                                        W. Hathaway
Request for Comments: 135                                           AMES
NIC: 6712                                                  29 April 1971
Updates: 110


                        Response to NWG/RFC #110
   (Conventions for Using an IBM 2741 Terminal as a User Console for
                    Access to Network Server Hosts)

   I would like to propose the following conventions to replace the ones
   proposed in RFC #110.  The original conventions suffer from lack of
   consideration of the correspondence 2741 and what I feel are
   inconsistencies and considerable difficulty of use.  (The 2741
   terminal with correspondence keyboard does not have all of the
   standard characters, notably:

      less than       
      logical not    [1]
      vertical bar    |

   Thus we must not use any of these characters in our conventions if we
   wish to support the correspondence 2741.)

   The dedication of certain characters to special functions involves a
   trade-off: the convenience of having the function as a single key
   versus the inconvenience of having to use two keys to enter the
   character as data.  I believe that only two of the special functions
   listed in RFC #110 justify the dedication of a key: the "character
   escape" function and the "character delete" function.  For the
   "character escape" function I recommend the cent sign [2], as this
   character is on both the regular and correspondence 2741 terminals
   and is not in the ASCII character set.  For the "character delete"
   function I recommend the backspace key for obvious reasons.  While
   there is some need to be able to enter the character "backspace" (as
   for underscoring output etc.,) I feel that the trade-off mentioned
   above clearly indicates a single key "character delete" would be much
   more valuable than a single key "backspace" and a two key "character
   delete."

   For the other special functions I recommend two key combinations,
   consisting of "character escape" [2] and a key to define the
   function.  These are summarized below:







Hathaway