🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <oeL6PB4w164w@uuisis.isis.org>, Michael Dillon asked where
to find information on NAPLPS, as used in Prodigy, ALEX, and Telidon.

Back in 1983, BYTE magazine ran a series of four articles about NAPLPS,
the "North American Presentation-Level Protocol Syntax", a protocol
developed for encoding videotext graphics.  The first article was

    "NAPLPS: A New Standard for Text and Graphics,
     Part 1: Introduction, History, and Structure"
     by Jim Fleming and William Frezza.  BYTE,
     volume 8, number 2, February 1983, pp. 203-254.

The articles presented a large amount of detail about how NAPLPS works
and how it may be used; the series of articles continued in the March,
April, and May 1983 issues of BYTE.

NAPLPS, pronounced like "nap-lips", fits in at approximately level 6
of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) reference model, but it
bears only slight resemblance to the ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation
1) and BER (Basic Encoding Rules) that constitute the official OSI
level 6.  NAPLPS defines a methodology of representing graphics
primitives within a 7- or 8-bit code set built around the model of
ASCII.  (If you are fully OSIfied, you may prefer to say "built around
the model of International Alphabet number 5".)

(Devotees of computer-industry history will note that the cover of
the February 1983 issue of BYTE featured a newly announced computer
system which promised to change the way people used computers--the
Apple Lisa.  And I happen to think that the editorial on page 6 was
well written.  :-)

-- 
 ....Richard S. Shuford  | "When the righteous triumph, there is great elation;
 ....shuford@cs.utk.edu  |  but when the wicked rise to power, men go into
 ....BIX: richard        |  hiding."  Proverbs 28:12 NIV