form feeds in postings

[John Ruschmeyer]

>From: wa371 at sdcc12.UUCP (wa371)
>Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
>Message-ID: <318 at sdcc12.UUCP>
>
>I have heard various readers complain about the annoyance of form feeds
>or control-L's in netnews postings.  Now recently the system that I am on
>has begun to add form feeds automatically to anything that I post to the
>newsnet.  What is going on here??
>
>Bernd <bear-nd>
>(Not affiliated with, nor speaking for U.C. San Diego)

Your statement about the form feeds being added by your system cannot be
true. (At least, they did not make it to our system.)
My guess is that your site has changed its news software.

Form feeds (control-L's ) usually are added to an article by the poster
himself. It is done to take advantage of a quirk in more, which forces a
new 'more' upon encountering a form feed. Most often, the trick is used to
delineate material which may be offensive or is a "spoiler" of a movie,
etc.

The complaints usually come from people running other pagers on certain
terminals. It seems, regretably, that some terminals do a "clear screen"
upon receiving a control-L.

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