[comp.windows.x] Regarding xphoon

erc@pai.UUCP (Eric Johnson) (09/28/88)

First, I would like to thank the authors of xphoon, as their program 
replaces my call to xsetroot with the same bitmap in a much, much shorter
time.

Unfortunately, I had a few problems with file name lengths, and I
ask that everyone who considers posting to comp.sources.x
use short file names, such as are accepted by System V Unix.

I apologize right here for using a System V derivative (HP-UX) -- I
didn't have a choice :-).  (This is not a flame, merely a request
for more portable postings.)

In using sh to extract parts 1-3 of xphoon, I had problems
with particularly large file names, e.g.,

   cheapmoon.bitmap.Z.uuaa
   cheapmoon.bitmap.Z.uuab
   cheapmoon.bitmap.Z.uuac

all come out to:  

   cheapmoon.bitm


Thus, sh would not extract two of the three parts of this file, as they all
resolved to the same file name. In addition, the file cheapmoon.c
asks the preprocessor to include  cheapmoon.bitmap (created from the
above three files), and of course that failed as well.  Please note,
I am not complaining about the authors of xphoon (it is free software
after all), I am simply using that posting as an example of the
problems encountered. 

What I ask people who post sources to do is to use shorter file names,
please (I think the VMS people have even greater problems, because
of an even shorter file name length restricion).  Your cooperation will
help the many users of System V and related systems.  The X Window
System is, after all, operating system independent, vendor
independent and hardware independent -- I happen to like it that way.

Thank you,
-Eric



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