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From: dorner@uiucuxc.CSO.UIUC.EDU
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: wordstar pathnames
Message-ID: <96900039@uiucuxc>
Date: Mon, 22-Sep-86 11:47:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucuxc.96900039
Posted: Mon Sep 22 11:47:00 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Sep-86 23:56:50 EDT
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Nf-ID: #R:<8609182052.AA24629@cory.Berkele:-38:uiucuxc:96900039:000:1112
Nf-From: uiucuxc.CSO.UIUC.EDU!dorner    Sep 22 10:47:00 1986


>>Gack!  Last I knew, WordStar STILL won't accept pathnames.  IBM certainly
>>did NOT change from flat to hierarchical without any problems.  In general,
>>you had to be in the same directory as your files to use them.  And that
>>has persisted in many programs, even popular ones.
>>-Steve Dorner
>
>	The point is that it was upwardly compatible... you could still give
>Wordstar non-path file names.
>
>			-Matt

Actually, I think Apple did much better in this regard.  Witness all
the programs (MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, Word, an anything else that
``follows the rules'') that worked quite well with HFS subdirectories
when they came out.  The programs that are broken are the ones that
insisted on viewing a file name as volume:name (Aztec C1.06G, MDS Edit,
...), rather than using StdFile/FSOpen in the prescribed manner.  And
you can still use most of those programs, with the (albeit pretty rotten)
limitation that the files not be in folders.

So, while neither company performed a major architectural change on their
filesystems without some problems, Apple's were less, in my humble opinion.

Steve