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ANSI (American National Standards Institute) defined a set of
commands by which a remote host-computer can tell your
"terminal" (usually a Mac or PC running communications
software imitating a terminal) to switch in and out of
printing mode. That is, one of the host commands in this set
tells the terminal to stop displaying incoming characters on
the screen, and instead send them out to the attached printer
until further notice. Another of the host commands tells the
terminal to switch back from the printer to the screen.
So when you tell pine to print (using
the Y or %
command), and then respond to
Print message xx using "attached-to-ansi"? (y/n/^C)
[y]:
with a Y or by pressing return,
pine sends the ANSI start-printing command to your terminal,
expecting in good faith that the terminal will activate the
printer. Pine then sends all the characters in the message
you've asked to have printed. And, finally, it sends the
stop-printing command.
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