On Tuesday, Feb 11, 2003, at 14:25 US/Pacific, Jeremy Erwin wrote:
On Tuesday, February 11, 2003, at 02:51 AM, Jordan Hubbard wrote:
Case-insensitive filesystems were invented for the people over 40 who
invariably skip details like the fact that the document is called
"MyLetter" when they're on the phone to tech support and insist,
often repeatedly and with increasing fervor, that it's the hapless
tech support person's fault when "open myletter" repeatedly fails to
work on a case-sensitive filesystem. Since they have yet to imbue
tech support people with psychic powers, it was decided to simply
make things work no matter which way mom typed it.
why would they be messing around with the CLI and "open", then? My
impression was that the the original mac system retained case for
aesthetic reasons-- "Read Me First" looks less intimidating than
README.TXT. When it came time to write Mac OSX it was discovered that
certain old applications would not work on a ufs filesystem. Perhaps
someone can correct me.
On the other hand, the benefits of a case-retaining system must
surely be apparent to anyone who has ever mistyped subWindow for
subwindow.
Thus stuff has been hashed out, ad nauseum (cf the archives for
darwin-developers list) a long time back. I think the Mac (and
Windows) file systems use case insensitivity (with case preservation)
because it makes the most sense to the target audience.
When it came time to write Mac OS X, the first file system was UFS
(remember Rhapsody?), but that wasn't going to work for those who were
used to the Mac style of file system, and HFS+ was implemented for Mac
OS X. It had nothing to do with what apps would and wouldn't work on
UFS.
Those of us who care about case seem to number below statistical
significance for companies trying to make a buck in the wider market.
Regards,
Justin
--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large *
Institute for General Semantics | When LuteFisk is outlawed
| Only outlaws will have
| LuteFisk
*--------------------------------------*-------------------------------*
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