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- Path: sparky!uunet!comp.vuw.ac.nz!cavebbs!tornado!khantazi!banksie
- From: banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
- Subject: Re: New MultiTOS PC (Atari Falcon)
- Message-ID: <23199wj017n@khantazi.welly.gen.nz>
- Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 18:55:44 +1200
- References: <BrrG7G.JCx@comp.vuw.ac.nz> <BJDBoB28w165w@mantis.co.uk> <Brt4uK.Its@comp.vuw.ac.nz> <2+y3uIj017n@khantazi.welly.gen.nz> <20PjRkj010n@st-andrews.ac.uk>
- Reply-To: banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
- Organization: My Arc.
- Lines: 39
-
- gta@st-andrews.ac.uk (Graham Allan) writes:
-
- > Sadly, I think most applications have these filing system weaknesses
- > hard-coded into them, ie: 10 character filenames, etc. I'm talking
- > about where you enter a filename into a save-file window here; loading
- > strangely-named files wouldn't cause any problem. Until any FS exists that
- > doesn't have this limitation, there's not much incentive for application
- > writers to allow for more. Of course, RISC-OS NFS doesn't have this
- > limitation, but then, its number of users can probably be counted on the
- > thumbs of one hand...
- >
- > Sorry to prolong this discussion, but I think it's a valid (if minor)
- > criticism of some RISC OS software.
-
- Standard technique when writing desktop software is to allow for a 256
- character string to be passed to the application. The *only* assumption that
- should be made is that there is at least *one* full stop in the pathname
- delimiting, if you trace from the end of the path, the leaf name of the
- file. Applications which don't follow this are by definition badly written.
-
- As long as you follow this convention then a Risc OS Application will
- happily use the long filenames of a new FS. How else do things like MemPhs
- work so well?
-
- So to sum up it is *not* a valid criticism of Risc OS but actually a
- criticism of the application code that has failed to met Risc OS compliancy
- specs. This is one of the whole points behind Risc OS's unique pathname
- scheme for files, to allow applications to use any FS without being
- concerned about the individual idiosyncracies of the FS they are on. And in
- my opinion it is one of the features Acorn got *very* right.
-
- Philip
-
- --
- Philip R. Banks Syntax: mail < banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz > @@@@@/|
- @@@@/#|
- @@@/##|
- I breathe the air, While they're running in a rat race, @@/---|
- Way above it all, Standing on higher ground. ---A.P.P. @/ |
-