Anticipating that someone would make Paul Gilmartin's [in this context obfuscatory] point, I distinguished line printers and page printers in my original post, noting that the distinction between content/text and formatting directives/presentation services that I was making was applicable [chiefly] to line printers.
Terminology is of course culture- and context-sensitive. I reset a switch on midatlantic to use either British or United Statesian language conventions, depending upon my travel direction; and I do something similar but curiously asymmetrical when I travel to and from Canada. [Canadians understand United Statesian usage, but United Statesians do not understand Canadian usage, particularly when it is British in substance although not of course in enunciation.] Analogously, the real obstacle to the use of 'break character' is that 'break' has a very different connotation in ASCII/UNIX/C environments that are still preoccupied with traditional and at best obsolescent serial, character-by-character processing schemes. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
