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Some senseless babbling from Murray Lesser to Eddy Thilleman
on 11-01-99  12:38 about File Systems...

 ML> (Excerpts from a message dated 10-30-99, Eddy Thilleman to Leonard
 ML> Erickson)

 ML> Hello Eddy--

 LE> It'd also be nice if OS/2 could "borrow" a trick from Netware.
Netware
 LE> creates an 8.3 "alias" so that DOS programs *can* access such
files.
 LE> The problem is that the name is neither predictable nor "settable"
(at
 LE> least in my version of Netware).

 ET>I have no reason to think it's technically impossible to write a
 >driver that does this or something like this. So I think it's
 >technically possible to write a driver that does this or something
 >like this.
 ML> I don't think you meant "driver" in the "device driver" sense.
 ML> Perhaps you meant an application program to move files between HPFS
 ML> and FAT partitions without losing the long name in the process.
While
 ML> I am sure that you can write such a program (using existing OS/2
APIs),
 ML> there is no necessity to do so.  Unless, of course, you don't like
 ML> mousing around the desktop and do your serious computing from the
 ML> command line. In that case, you probably don't use long file names,
no
 ML> matter which file system you are using, because they are a nuisance
to
 ML> enter from the keyboard.
[snip]

I'm one of those people who don't like mousing around, but I also like
long
filenames.  Any inconvenience in typing them (I'm a fast typist, so it's
not much) is small compared to the annoyance experienced when trying to
figure out what 8.3 name was used to name something that would be easy
to
find with a sensible longer name.

4OS2 duplicates the WPS behavior you describe in the snipped portion,
creating the .LONGNAME attribute, and using it for the filename when the
file is copied/moved back to a HPFS drive.

And 4OS2's commandline completion also eliminates the annoyance of
typing
long filenames.  You can type just a few characters of the name, hit
tab,
and 4OS2 completes it (tab repeatedly cycles through whatever names
match
the characters you typed - the latest version of 4OS2 even has a
facility
to define what extensions are appropriate for a given program, so when I
type lxlite and hit tab, only EXE and DLL files will be cycled through).
With that, you end up typing *less* than a standard 8.3 filename.

You should probably give 4OS2 a try.

Mike Ruskai
thannymeister@yahoo.com

... Windows 95 & Bill Wolff : No Brainpower Required & None Provided

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