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Subject: Re: linux issues

Author: Roy Eassa

Date: 13:24:00 05/23/02

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On May 23, 2002 at 16:03:11, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On May 23, 2002 at 11:15:14, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On May 23, 2002 at 01:31:56, Jeremiah Penery wrote:
>>
>>>On May 23, 2002 at 01:16:44, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 22, 2002 at 22:08:45, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Filenames are case sensitive in Windows only for storing. When searching for
>>>>>filenames, the search is case insensitive. That's the best way to do it in my
>>>>>opinion.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Not in mine.  I want WCCCxxxx to mean something significant, since WCCC is
>>>>obviously an abbreviation for something.  wcccxxxx should (to me) be a
>>>>different file.  Otherwise, _why_ would I name one WCCCxxxx and the other
>>>>wcccxxxx and expect them to be the same?  Why not just type them the same
>>>>and it works.  IE if you don't like case-sensitive filenames, simply make
>>>>all your filenames lowercase and the problem is instantly solved, but
>>>>leaving the rest of us the option of using case sensitivity to do whatever
>>>>we want...
>>>
>>>He's not talking about saving a file with different case.  If a filesystem can
>>>do that, great.  But when you're _searching_ for a file, you should be able to
>>>search for "wccc..." and see a list with _both_ sets of files.  That is what
>>>Christophe is saying, and it makes way more sense to do it this way.
>>
>>
>>This is already trivial to do using regular expressions.  Or anybody could
>>write their own "find" command that is case insensitive.  I did this inside
>>Crafty to match GM/IM names to adjust how crafty behaves.  And I found it
>>tedious to try to match strange combinations of upper and lower case letters,
>>so I simply mapped them all to lowercase _first_...
>>
>>But in Unix, if you are looking for files or strings in files, it is trivial
>>to make it case insensitive already.  Just study "regular expressions"...
>
>
>
>And here we get a good understanding of one of the problems that will keep Linux
>away from mainstream (and that's a pity).
>
>The file matching convention is user unfriendly (convince yourself by making a
>poll here for example), and the proposed solution for this problem is even more
>unfriendly (regular expressions, how am I going to explain that to my mother -
>she just wants to do word processing and email).
>
>That's all the Linux philosophy in a snapshot. It's just an example, but you can
>repeat the same pattern for many features of the OS.
>
>Normal people care more about useability than about features.
>
>But not Linux users/developpers. Linux users/developpers care more about
>features than about useability.
>
>The result is a clear success: the stuff is unuseable for normal people. And
>Linuxers like it: normal people are a threat to the philosophy. They might
>demand stupid things, like being able to retrieve a file called "WCCCxxx" by
>just typing "wccc*". Geez!
>
>Time for new blood to kick in and reconsider some basic things... There is a
>huge potential in Linux.
>


Maybe someday a major company with good GUI abilities will take a version of
Unix and put a user-friendly GUI around it.

If that ever happens, I have an idea: they should call it OS X.

;-)



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