Bug#265756: kernel-image-2.6.7: funny caps-lock bug when logging in

["Harald Dunkel" <harald.dunkel@t-online.de>]

This is a feature, not a bug. In the early days of
computing people used teletypers for interactive
work. These devices had only upper case or only
lower case letters. So if you enter your login
name in upper case letters, it is assumed that
you have only upper case.

Teletypers were heavy character devices receiving data
over a serial line at about 50 bit/sec. Only 1 character
was buffered. See http://members.aon.at/oe1-100470/wago13.htm
for some nice images.

BTW, the end of line sequence in DOS (CR-LF) is a
feature introduced for teletypers, too.

On a Carriage Return (CR) the carriage, a pretty heavy
piece of hardware, was pulled back by a big spring from
the right edge to the left edge of the paper. This took
more time than receiving the next character. But
fortunately the Line Feed (LF) could be executed while
the carriage was still on its way, so its "CR-LF".

Something like LF-CR would not have worked.


Regards

Harri