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   Lars Brinkhoff (larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 25-Apr-2025 21:11:30 JST Lars Brinkhoff

   This 1961 proposed standard for punched tape has a lozenge ◊ as the printed representation for an ESCAPE code. Around 10 years later, the Stanford and MIT AI labs adopted this glyph for their extended ASCII character set.

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     Lars Brinkhoff (larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 25-Apr-2025 21:11:27 JST Lars Brinkhoff

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     Appendix B: Interesting information about the Meta modifier in X and xterm. https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm-meta-key.html

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     Lars Brinkhoff (larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 25-Apr-2025 21:11:28 JST Lars Brinkhoff

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     NOW, this all leads up to my question: Riddle me this, is there a connection between the SAIL/MIT Altmode ◊, and the Sun Meta ◊◆?

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     Lars Brinkhoff (larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 25-Apr-2025 21:11:28 JST Lars Brinkhoff

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     Appendix A: Yes, earlier Sun keyboards labelled Meta "Left" and "Right.

     Alfred M. Szmidt repeated this.
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     Lars Brinkhoff (larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 25-Apr-2025 21:11:29 JST Lars Brinkhoff

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     A few years later, both Altmode and Meta where adopted by the Lisp machine "space-cadet" keyboard.

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     Lars Brinkhoff (larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 25-Apr-2025 21:11:29 JST Lars Brinkhoff

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     In the early 1980s, the Sun workstation adopted the Meta modifier; the keyboard used a lozenge or filled diamond ◆ symbol.

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     Lars Brinkhoff (larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 25-Apr-2025 21:11:30 JST Lars Brinkhoff

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     The escape code was also called Altmode. On Emacs, which was invented 1976 at the MIT AI lab, an Altmode prefix key can be used the same way as a Meta modifier key. This is till true today.