(Excerpts from a message dated 10-28-99, Leonard Erickson to Ian Moote)

Hi Leonard--

 LE> Well, there *is* one reason for HPFS on removable media. Long
 LE> filenames. At least until and unless OS/2 gets support for Win95
 LE> style long file names.
 LE>
 LE> I'm sure someone is going to mention using ZIP or some other
 LE> archiver. Many of the files I'm putting on the ZIP disks are things
 LE> I want *direct* access to. Not access thru an archiver.

    You can format Iomega ZIP diskettes HPFS, complete with long file
names, if you insist and are willing to live with the restrictions. (See
the online manual that came with your OS/2 driver.)  It is a nuisance,
and you lose about 3 MB of file space, but it most certainly is
possible.  However, you can't put HPFS on floppies, because if you could
there wouldn't be any usable file space left :-(.  All this is assuming
that you have a good reason to use long file names.  I don't, because my
serious computer usage is done from the command line, where long file
names are a nuisance.

 IM> OS/2 keeps track of long filenames on removable FAT drives. I just 
 IM> double-checked: I had a file on floppy named "JIM". I renamed it,
 IM> using  WPS, to "Jimbo a-logo!.blobbo.txt". Checking on my DOS laptop,
 IM> the  filename is now "JIMBO_A-.TXT", but it still comes up as "Jimbo a-
 IM> logo.blobbo.txt" on OS/2. [:)

LE>That's nice. I'd like to be able to go one step farther and assign a
  >*specific* shortname to a file without losing the long name. Even if
  >it used up another directory entry. Then we'd be able to keep old
  >programs happy indefinitely and still use long filenames. Unix can do
  >this, I just forget the command.

    Ian is trying to tell you not to confuse the names shown for a file
on a floppy drive when using the DIR command with the name of that file
as known to the Work Place Shell.  After you have copied or moved a file
to a floppy (using the WPS to preserve the long name in the EAs), the
system will rename the floppy _directory_ entry for the file to an 8.3
format.  If you don't like that name, you can rename the directory entry
for the file on the floppy to any 8.3-format name you want, from the
command line.  (You must use the command-line to do the renaming; if you
rename the file from the WPS, the name in the EAs associated with that
file will also be renamed to the 8.3 value you just assigned to it.)
Whether or not you rename the file, displaying it with the WPS will show
the long name, rather than the short name.  When you copy or move the
file back to the HPFS partition (using the WPS), the long name (recorded
in the EAs) will be restored to the HPFS directory entry.

    Regards,

        --Murray

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