Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 13:53:23 05/23/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 23, 2002 at 16:24:00, Roy Eassa wrote:
>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.
>
>;-)
The guys at Lindows.com are supposed to do that, but all they have at this time
is vaporware.
Christophe
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