Standards like EBCDIC and CGA are on-topic. They are considered retro and are largely obsolete today. However, a consensus about standards that have not stopped being used has not been reached.
Case study: The ¦ button labelling on keyboards
This de-facto standard is wide-spread enough that even Wikipedia has written about it:
Due to historical confusion between the two, computer keyboards and displays may not clearly or consistently differentiate them. [...] in many fonts the vertical bar key produces a broken-bar symbol [...] Some keyboard drivers map the broken bar key to the vertical bar [...] the “> < |” key in the lower left is labelled “> < ¦” but always produces a vertical bar character.
The origins of this standard are less clear - the reasons for this decision (or set of decisions) are interesting if not directly useful.
Case study: ASCII
ASCII is a well-known standard for text representation using 7 bits per character. Whilst now largely superseded by Unicode it remains relevant: not only as the first 128 code-points of Unicode but also remaining useful in its own right, where UTF-8 is too complicated to implement or is otherwise cumbersome.
This standard was extremely useful for ensuring that text remained readable on multiple different machines - for archival purposes and transmission of data between computers, networks or institutions. The various control codes have served (and continue to serve) many different purposes in addition to their intended use.
Are such standards on-topic?
