The distinction between those semantics died a long time ago by others I'm sorry to say, and I'm continuing to persist that.
APC is far less supported overall by terminals (for example, Terminal.app on macOS would simply dump APC to the screen, ignore the framing, and treat the APC data as normal pty data, and Terminal.app is used by a LOT of people). Plus, its anything-goes format makes it hard to ship safe protocols that overlap with others (APC was always meant afaik for _one_ protocol -- the application's, not multiplexing many).
Compare this to OSC which is well supported, has a well defined multiplexing format (the first number), and has a well defined framing that all terminals I know of ignore for unknown values. That's perfect.
As the Arcan project so eloquently stated[1]: "Terminal emulators emulate a machine that has never existed, a fantasy computer." More details in the link by people I respect who have worked on this problem far longer than I have.
[1]: https://arcan-fe.com/2025/01/27/sunsetting-cursed-terminal-e...
APC is far less supported overall by terminals (for example, Terminal.app on macOS would simply dump APC to the screen, ignore the framing, and treat the APC data as normal pty data, and Terminal.app is used by a LOT of people). Plus, its anything-goes format makes it hard to ship safe protocols that overlap with others (APC was always meant afaik for _one_ protocol -- the application's, not multiplexing many).
Compare this to OSC which is well supported, has a well defined multiplexing format (the first number), and has a well defined framing that all terminals I know of ignore for unknown values. That's perfect.
As the Arcan project so eloquently stated[1]: "Terminal emulators emulate a machine that has never existed, a fantasy computer." More details in the link by people I respect who have worked on this problem far longer than I have.
[1]: https://arcan-fe.com/2025/01/27/sunsetting-cursed-terminal-e...