@asuffield said:
You just made that up. It was never an attempt to reduce the size of text files. Shouldn't you be posting this kind of nonsense to slashdot?
[snip]
Windows uses CR+LF because DOS did, which is generally believed to have inherited this behaviour from CP/M. CR+LF was originally used only on teletype devices, because the print head needed time to settle down after returning to the start, and inserting extra characters provided this time - it's a cheap hack, in other words. It should be noted that the original teletype systems did not always store CR+LF in files, they just added it in the teletype driver where necessary. CP/M came much later and had no need to bother with this; there is some speculation as to why it did, ranging from mindless emulation of earlier teletype-based DEC operating systems, to a deliberate attempt to differ from the popular AT&T Unix in order to reduce the possiblity of lawsuits.
Now who's making stuff up? CR & LF have clearly separate functions on a teletype - both do what their names say. CR returns the print carriage to the left margin. LF moves the paper up one line. They can be used independently - the standard way of printing bold on a teletype was to print the whole line, CR (without LF) and print just the bold parts again. As well, I've seen a teletype used as a (very) poor man's chart recorder by issuing LF's and printing * whilst using space or BS characters to position the head right or left. There *is* a built in delay in the original teletype standards (to allow the mechanism to cycle) but it's in the stop bits of the transmission protocol so is on a per-character basis, not per-line.
Also, your reference to "stored files" and drivers in the context of teletypes is
amusing. Teletypes predate file storage in that sense although
messages could be punched to paper tape. I don't think there was much discussion of print drivers in the 1920's when Teletype Corp started production.
I don't really give a fig what format is used, as long as it's used clearly and consistently.