Same reason there’s a ScrollLock key on keyboards. Didn’t always have scrollbars and if the application prints more than you can read, you want to pause that…
Short answer, terminals are built on the same technology as physical terminals from the 60s and 70s when controlling the flow of data from the server was a more useful feature.
Interesting, why is that? Like what feature is that?
Same reason there’s a ScrollLock key on keyboards. Didn’t always have scrollbars and if the application prints more than you can read, you want to pause that…
THAT’S WHAT IT’S FOR??
Now that I think about it, it does seem pretty obvious.
Short answer, terminals are built on the same technology as physical terminals from the 60s and 70s when controlling the flow of data from the server was a more useful feature.
It’s part of the terminal emulator flow control