std-unix@ut-sally.UUCP (10/27/86)
From: seismo!mcvax!guido (Guido van Rossum) Date: Thu, 23 Oct 86 23:19:13 +0100 In article <6029@ut-sally.UUCP>, Mark Horton writes: >I think it would be interesting to hear what other, case-insensitive >operating systems do about these issues. What do MS DOS, or VM/CMS, >or VMS, or whatever, do with their case insensitive file names in >Europe, or Japan, or whereever? Since you are asking: I know quite well what two other case-insensitive systems do. They take extreme positions (while both being case-insensitive!). To wit: MS-DOS: - Everything is in upper case (lower case is accepted by system calls but you get upper case back by directory searches etc.). - Allows only alphanumerics and a very small set of punctuation characters; the rest are sort of ignored or considered as terminators! - This means Germans etc. are in the same position as just after the invention of the telegraph. (The Dutch don't particularly mind because they use few special characters and never know exactly where an umlaut should go anyway (we don't call it an umlaut, actually, but the Dutch word wouldn't make sense to most readers of this message).) Apple Macintosh: - The case given when a file was created is retained in the directory listing so it is possible to make a file name stand out by calling it "READ ME" (yes, with spaces!). - All characters of the Mac's 8-bit character set are allowed, except the colon, which serves as a pathname delimiter ('/' in Unix). This is USASCII extended with all sorts of odd characters used in all sorts of foreign languages (as long as they use the latin alphabet as a base). Even chracters that don't have a representation in the commonly used fonts are allowed; even the null character, (although this possibility necessarily disappears in the C interface). There is a mapping between the cases which can be used for various purposes; A and a correspond in this mapping, but accented characters are not the same as their other case counterparts (I believe -- someone borrowed my copy of Inside Macintosh). This mapping is used when files are opened, etc. There is also a collating sequence for arbitrary strings which can be changed by different countries. - Germans, French and Swedes should be perfectly happy with this, unless they happen to be case-sensitivity-freaks. I don't know about the Japanese, but they could get away quite well if they use a different mapping to character glyphs (which is quite simple to do on the Mac). (BTW, I think Apple has also designed decent solutions to other internationalization issues -- their date and time notation, and probably that for currency also, can be adapted to any of the European countries in which they sell computers!) Oh, just in case votes are taken: I am *for* case sensitivity. John Bruner put it quite well. Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <guido@mcvax.uucp> Volume-Number: Volume 7, Number 90
std-unix@ut-sally.UUCP (Moderator, John Quarterman) (11/02/86)
From: nike!oliveb!3comvax!marcl (Marc Lavine at 3Com Corporation) Organization: 3Com Corp., Santa Clara, CA Date: Thu, 30 Oct 86 21:34:05 PST In article <6109@ut-sally.UUCP> you write: >From: seismo!mcvax!guido (Guido van Rossum) >(BTW, I think Apple has also designed decent solutions to other >internationalization issues -- their date and time notation, and probably >that for currency also, can be adapted to any of the European countries >in which they sell computers!) In case you weren't aware, PC-DOS also has a mechanism for changing the date and time display formats based on what country you are in. You can set the country by using a statement such as country = 031 (for the Netherlands) in the config.sys file. DOS will use this information when displaying dates and times (such as in directory listings) and it is also available to application programs that want to use it. This has better support in DOS versions 3.0 and later than in DOS 2.1. -- Marc Lavine UUCP: ...{ihnp4|nike|hplabs|sun|glacier}!oliveb!3comvax!marcl Volume-Number: Volume 8, Number 14
std-unix@ut-sally.UUCP (Moderator, John Quarterman) (11/03/86)
From: guy@sun.com (Guy Harris) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 86 00:51:47 PST > In case you weren't aware, PC-DOS also has a mechanism for changing > the date and time display formats based on what country you are in. > You can set the country by using a statement such as country = 031 > (for the Netherlands) in the config.sys file. Yes. Note, however, that this still doesn't do anything about the limited character set permitted for MS-DOS files, so it seems you're stuck if you want to give a file a name that includes characters not in the regular ASCII set (or even some characters *in* the regular ASCII set). Volume-Number: Volume 8, Number 22