Re: Wonderful ProDOS patch!

[Jim Murphy <murph@apple.com>]

In article <a376991@pro-ict.cts.com> Randy Shackelford,
shack@pro-ict.cts.com writes:
>>It is definitely the best thing to happen to ProDOS since GS/OS. Now I am
>
>Just keep it away from my machine. I think it's a stupid idea.
>
>>hoping someone can help to increase the size of the name space... so I
>>can write Beauty & the Beast seq, or Out of This World.
>
>Sure, as soon as the entire file system is redesigned. Good grief, just
>use HFS already.

     These are my thoughts exactly. Simply hacking ProDOS so that it seems
to support a character set that is different from its defined set is just
plain stupid. Lots of programs reasonably and rightly assume that ProDOS
file names contain a specific set of characters, and they cannot be
guaranteed to work correctly, given a set of characters they don't expect.

     For example, what if a text editor author decided, "I like filetype
$C1 for storing my text files. I don't care if they're supposed to be
pictures, I wanna' use $C1 for text". So, you write a nice letter, and the
text editor happily saves it as filetype $C1. Later, you double-click on 
the file, and your paint program runs - and then crashes. It was expecting
a picture, but it found nothing of the sort. This is exactly the same risk
you take when redefining the ProDOS filename charcter set that any
reasonable programmer can see cannot be redefined.

     Of course, you can still do as you wish. I just think it's a stupid
hack with far too many problems that haven't been thought out.


Jim Murphy                  Dr. MacsBug                    murph@apple.com

"...never quite said what I wanted to say to you,                 The Cure
  never quite managed the words to explain to you..."             Untitled