Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!agate!ucbvax!SC.ZIB-BERLIN.DBP.DE!Schoepf From: Schoepf@SC.ZIB-BERLIN.DBP.DE (Rainer Schoepf) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: RE: (702) Filenames - recommendation Message-ID: <9104111737.AA21154@sc.ZIB-BERLIN.DBP.DE> Date: 11 Apr 91 17:39:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 58 Brian Hamilton Kelly writes in answer to George D. Greenwade's message about file names: I don't think this is a consideration that's significant, either to archivists or to users.files to their systems, they are almost certain to have some mechanism by which they may specify an abbreviated name that is meaningful to them. The only exception to this rule is that files intended for a particular operating system, such as MS-DOS, conform to the conventions of that system, at least, to the extent to which they can be represented under the VMS operating system used at the Aston Archive. So there are, for example, boo-encoded archives of files intended for MS-DOS, and these usually have names that conform to 8+3; obviously the files contained within these archives will have file names conformant to MS-DOS, because that's how they were generated in the first place. (An example of a system-specific file name that cannot be represented under VMS is the Unix tar archive, with a name of the form archive.tar.Z under Unix, that has to be held under VMS as ARCHIVE.TAR_Z) I think his point of view is wrong, for two reasons: the first is rather technical, but significant: in some versions of the Novel network on PCs the extra characters in the file name are not ignored. Example: TeX tries to read twocolumn.sty, on the disk it's called twocolum.sty, and with Novel running, it cannot find it. That's a pain! I assume you can find similar behaviour on other systems as well. The second reason is more basic: one of the basic ideas behind TeX is its portability and that does also mean that those files that can be exchanged, like TeX input files, LaTeX style files, etc. should have the same name on all machines. Otherwise you will end up with the situation that people write \documentstyle[doublesp]{article} (and why not, if that's the name of the file on their system!), and suddenly it does no longer run on systems with long file names. I agree that 8+3 characters stiffles creativity and that it's a bad design decision, BUT it's THE standard. I think I can safely say that the number of TeX users on MS-DOS and similar systems far exceeds the number of those on all other systems together. We, who are blessed with better machines tend to forget that we are only a minority. So, we have to settle for the only thing that can be used on all systems, and that's 8+3 (notwithstanding the fact that TeX was developed on a machine with 6+3, but which is now practically extinct). One thing I can say by now is that the new LaTeX will conform to this. Rainer Sch\"opf Dr. Rainer Schoepf Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum ,,Ich mag es nicht, wenn fuer Informationstechnik Berlin sich die Dinge so frueh Heilbronner Strasse 10 am Morgen schon so D-1000 Berlin 31 dynamisch entwickeln!'' Federal Republic of Germany or