On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 16:07:43 -0500, Don Williams wrote: >Imagine extending case sensitivity to font sensitivity. If the file system >allowed file names to be font sensitive, so that font characteristics like >bold, italics, underline, color, etc. made a difference. Then foo [in blue], >foo [in red], foo [in green] would be different files. Just think how >expressive the user's file names could be. Allowing the user specify the >font characteristics to be used when displaying/listing file names might be >strange, but requiring font characteristics to match in order to manipulate >a file would be a nightmare in Technicolor. > >With that insanity in mind, I'm happy with a file system that keeps my case >intact when it displays my files names, but does not force me to use the >same case to manipulate my files (that's expressive enough for me). > But you may be showing an anglophone bias. If I were a native Russian speaker, I might feel slighted if I were required to name my files in ISO Latin 1 rather than Cyrillic.
I just tried, and on OS X and OpenSolaris I was able to create directories, both named Документы (I wonder what LISTSERV will do with that; I'm posting from the web interface). I don't think I'd be comfortable if they were conflated with either "Documents" or "Dokumenty". So, in some environments, font sensitivity is with us; I believe for better rather than for worse as long as the file system supports multiple fonts. (OS X and OSol both appear to have used UTF-8. I wonder what Samba would do. I shudder to think what a z/OS catalog would do.) -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
