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From: neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Case sensitive TOS
Keywords: Not so good
Message-ID: <5265@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Date: 24 Jan 91 09:21:14 GMT
Organization: Computer Science, Heriot-Watt U., Scotland
Lines: 51

In article <1991Jan23.115630.5846@convex.com> rosenkra@convex.com
(William Rosencranz) writes:
>the desktop does, however, force upper case, which is why it is a pain
>in the *ss to run unix utilites from the desktop, especially ones which
>have different meanings of "-c" and "-C".

Not true since TOS 1.2.

>i already mentioned that the program can make a call like this to force
>old, compatible behavior:
>
>	Fcase(CASE_OFF);
> ... (*VERY* well detailed explanation deleted)

This is a nice little idea but with the ST disk format being compatible with
the PC's at the current moment, disks with this system would cause havoc on
PC's as well as old ROMs. PC disk compatibility is one of the best decisions
Atari ever made for the ST.

I remember that before 1.4 (shudder) sometimes two files of the same name
would turn up. I beleive the phenomonon (?) was due to a bug in Fcreate.
Anyway the effect was a pain in the *&%. Disks with the *new* system and
having filenames would make the problem more prevalent to old ROM users.

While a program writing a file can check which TOS version is in the machine,
an old TOS version can't be expected to understand what a new TOS version had
in mind when the file was written.

And that my friends is why Atari will *NEVER* implement that system.
I don't blame them. Unless they release new TOS versions every 2 months,
and I sincerely hope they will, backward compatibility MUST be maintained.

>-bill
>rosenkra@convex.com
>--
>Bill Rosenkranz            |UUCP: {uunet,texsun}!convex!c1yankee!rosenkra
>Convex Computer Corp.      |ARPA: rosenkra%c1yankee@convex.com

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!                                                                            !
! Neil Forsyth                       JANET:  neil@uk.ac.hw.cs                !
! Dept. of Computer Science          ARPA:   neil@cs.hw.ac.uk                !
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! Edinburgh, Scotland, UK                                                    !
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