form feed tapes on printers (was Re: Mona Lisa)

[Dennis Boone]

 > > A blank was the usual character for single- spaced output.  You could
 > > also punch a tape so that a skip was executed over the perforation,
 > > but single-spaced output otherwise.

 > Not sure about that - I've never punched a real forms control tape.
 >  
 > > "+" kept the paper from advancing, I believe.  This is all from
 > > memory--I'd have to check to be sure.

On the IBM, CDC and Prime systems I worked with, blank to single space,
0 to double space, + to overstrike, - to triple space.  (Prime even had
a variant they called "COBOL carriage control" in which the spooler
inspected the leading _two_ columns for such characters.)

MSU's SCOPE/HUSTLER installation assigned some channel, I don't recall
which, to land just above the end of the page.  They then used this to
set up the lines of *** that were characteristic of banner pages, so
that they spanned across the perf, making it easier for Ops to burst the
listings.  For some reason, the ** characters on their print chains were
always mushy. :)

Actually, they also sometimes printed dayfile output at the right side
of the page, allegedly to even the wear on the "chain", though I suppose
that would indicate that the printers weren't really "chain" printers.

De