neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth) (01/24/91)
In article <1991Jan23.115630.5846@convex.com> rosenkra@convex.com (William Rosencranz) writes: >the desktop does, however, force upper case, which is why it is a pain >in the *ss to run unix utilites from the desktop, especially ones which >have different meanings of "-c" and "-C". Not true since TOS 1.2. >i already mentioned that the program can make a call like this to force >old, compatible behavior: > > Fcase(CASE_OFF); > ... (*VERY* well detailed explanation deleted) This is a nice little idea but with the ST disk format being compatible with the PC's at the current moment, disks with this system would cause havoc on PC's as well as old ROMs. PC disk compatibility is one of the best decisions Atari ever made for the ST. I remember that before 1.4 (shudder) sometimes two files of the same name would turn up. I beleive the phenomonon (?) was due to a bug in Fcreate. Anyway the effect was a pain in the *&%. Disks with the *new* system and having filenames would make the problem more prevalent to old ROM users. While a program writing a file can check which TOS version is in the machine, an old TOS version can't be expected to understand what a new TOS version had in mind when the file was written. And that my friends is why Atari will *NEVER* implement that system. I don't blame them. Unless they release new TOS versions every 2 months, and I sincerely hope they will, backward compatibility MUST be maintained. >-bill >rosenkra@convex.com >-- >Bill Rosenkranz |UUCP: {uunet,texsun}!convex!c1yankee!rosenkra >Convex Computer Corp. |ARPA: rosenkra%c1yankee@convex.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ! DISCLAIMER:Unless otherwise stated, the above comments are entirely my own ! ! ! ! "I think all right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of ! ! being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this country with ! ! being sick and tired. I'm certainly not and I'm sick and tired of being ! ! told that I am!" - Monty Python ! ! ! ! Neil Forsyth JANET: neil@uk.ac.hw.cs ! ! Dept. of Computer Science ARPA: neil@cs.hw.ac.uk ! ! Heriot-Watt University UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!neil ! ! Edinburgh, Scotland, UK ! +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
rosenkra@convex.com (William Rosencranz) (01/25/91)
[ sorry for beating this to death... ] In article <5265@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth) writes: >This is a nice little idea but with the ST disk format being compatible with >the PC's at the current moment, disks with this system would cause havoc on >PC's as well as old ROMs. PC disk compatibility is one of the best decisions >Atari ever made for the ST. yes, so let the power be in the user's hands to control how he wants to use his sytem. if i toggle "old mode", it should not make any difference to the PC. granted, i have to remember to do this, but then i also have to remember to turn the computer on before i can use it :-). >While a program writing a file can check which TOS version is in the machine, >an old TOS version can't be expected to understand what a new TOS version had >in mind when the file was written. again, you, the user, could always toggle to "old mode" and NEVER have a problem (from the desktop or with a trivial cmd shell oriented program). ok, enuf of this. it'll never happen (tho i still think it should)... -bill rosenkra@convex.com -- Bill Rosenkranz |UUCP: {uunet,texsun}!convex!c1yankee!rosenkra Convex Computer Corp. |ARPA: rosenkra%c1yankee@convex.com