OT: Vertical Tab was Re: indendation question

[Frank Millman]

Samuel Walters <swalters_usenet at yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<pan.2004.01.05.23.05.44.722929 at yahoo.com>...
> 
> What exactly *is* a vertical tab?  I don't think I've ever seen it on a
> keyboard or used in the wild.  I think I may have seen it on the
> keybindings for a mainframe terminal I once used, but I didn't really dig
> too deep because, as far as operating the mainframe was concerned, I was a
> well trained monkey who could check and restart failed jobs.
> 
> Inquiring minds want to know.
> 
> Sam Walters

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember reading years ago that
vertical tabs were used to control line printers - you could force the
printer to skip straight to a line number instead of issuing a series
of line feeds.

Frank Millman