Re: Wonderful ProDOS patch!

[mdavis@crash.cts.com (Morgan Davis)]

In <1994Jan4.215434.1460@gallant.apple.com> Jim Murphy <murph@apple.com> writes:

>>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.

For the record, about a million years ago (it seems), I created just
such a patch for ProDOS *and* BASIC.System as part of the ProLine BBS
software we sell.  The idea of relaxing the rules for ProDOS file names
is not a new one. 

The program that patched ProDOS in memory was called UnixNames, and it
was written before the advent of GS/OS.  It allowed ProLine systems to
offer naming schemes consistent with most Unix operating systems.  And
since ProLine's Unix-like shell environment is central to the operation
of the whole system, it was pretty useful at the time.  (We could have
files like ".login" for example, so the Unix interface was then fairly
consistent, which is important in any user interface).

Fortunately, the patch was written to seek out a particular signature of
instructions in the ProDOS memory space, so it was compatible with many
years worth of upgrades without any modification necessary.  It may
still work.

Back when GS/OS was released with the ProDOS FST, ProLine owners who
relied on GS/OS based applications to do disk maintenance ran into
problems. Backups, filesystem checks, optimization, and so on, all met
with errors because of the use of these "unixnames".  Operators had to
stay in the patched ProDOS-8 environment to do system maintenance like
this, and that was a major problem since the GS/OS tools were clearly
superior and more desirable to use.  Plus, a number of ProDOS-8 programs
simply refused to allow you to access files that didn't have legal names
(AppleWorks for one, important disk utilities like ProSel for another). 
It became apparent that having these names was more trouble than it was
worth.

Some time in the late 80's, I completely restructured ProLine to use
only legal, standard ProDOS file names, and have not missed UnixNames as
much as I thought I would.  As a result, a lot of good has come of this.
For example, the "ls" command was taught how to work with invisible
files (that is, files with the invisibility bit set).  Thus, we don't
have dot files (or "hidden" files) such as ".login" anymore.  Instead we
have files like "login" with the invisibility bit set which show up only
with "ls -a".

Anyway, a bit of history.  Much water has passed under the bridge since
then, and with it a little experience, insight, and wisdom has been gained.


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