[geeks] Weird MacOS issue

[Mike Meredith]

On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 13:27:50 -0600 (CST), Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Dec 2008, der Mouse wrote:
> 
> > (b) Which version of case insensitivity?  The ASCII version?  The
> > 8859-1 version?  The 8859-7 version?  The UTF-8 version?  Something
> > else?
> 
> In the case of HFS+, there is a field in the filesystem header
> specifically to indicate this, whose value is set based on the user's
> locale at the time of filesystem creation.

Ouch! Whilst locale (rather than just character set) is probably needed
for case insensitivity, doing it at the filesystem level is probably
wrong. I know of filesystems that are used by people with widely
different 'locales' (or whatever Windows calls 'em).

As a trivial example of how difficult things can be when case folding
(do we really want this code in the kernel?) ... does the "German" HISS
match "hiss" or "hi(sz-ligature)" (the word is made up, but the
problem is real)?

> Some day, someone will have to type
> that filename at a terminal, and they shouldn't need a character map
> to figure out how to type U+10442.

I think that battle is lost, although I don't suppose many people will
put U+10442 into a filename. Besides we have many ways of dealing with
funny-named files.

> To the person sitting at the keyboard who is actually -using- the
> software (and not in a programming context), what are the benefits of
> a case-sensitive filesystem?

Contrary to popular belief, users are surprisingly flexible. My sister
recently switched to Linux, and I don't believe that the
case-sensitivity of filenames has ever come up. If it did, I'd probably
reply "That's just the way it is". Most users are going to be pointing
and clicking anyway.


-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 Write a wise saying and your name will live forever
 -- anonymous