Is HFS really "scary"?

[Triston Whetten]

NTFS is case insensitive and case preserving by default, but can be  
made case sensitive.

Take SFU (Services For Unix) that runs on win32 systems.  It shows  
some of the technical ability of windows (though I'm no fan of  
Windows).  It runs as a peer to the win32 subsystem (not on top of it  
like Cygwin).  Among the interesting things it does is removes some  
character limitations from win32 filenames and during the install,  
can change NTFS to be a case sensitive filesystem.

SFU used to be the Interix product that was intended to bridge unix  
users/developers onto win32.  In recent times, it's taking a slightly  
different life I believe (since being given a Mac, I've fallen  
hopelessly in love it and abandoned Windows except when forced to use  
it).  SFU allows much GNU software (good or bad) to be built and used  
on a Windows computer with not a whole lot of modification.

Triston.

On Feb 7, 2008, at 6:05 AM, Tabitha McNerney wrote:

>
>
> On 2/7/08, Jochem Huhmann <joh at revier.com> wrote:
> On 2008-02-06, at 21:13, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
>
> > That's probably never going to happen.  When you're dealing with
> > grandma on the phone and she's saying "I can't open my file named
> > ``fluffy!''", the last thing you need is to go 10 rounds trying to
> > figure out whether she actually named it Fluffy, fluffY or FlUFfY.
> > That is why case insensitivity was added in the first place (and
> > believe me, it was a lot more work than being case sensitive).
>
> I think no one really objects against the user interface being case
> insensitive. This clearly is a feature, not a bug. But having this
> feature implemented in the file system seems like only a small piece
> of the right problem solved by messing around in the entirely wrong
> place.
>
> I might not be popular for asking this question but what does  
> Microsoft do for its NTFS file system? For example, is NTFS case  
> insensitive for Windows XP Home but case sensitive for Windows XP  
> Professional? (similar for their confusing Vista OSs)?
>
> I think it is reasonable to expect that Microsoft also has to deal  
> with "Grandma" as Jordan stated, but Microsoft also has to deal  
> with the professional market.
>
> Thanks,
>
> T.M.
>
>
> There's no way to take that further (in the file system) by
> integrating even more useful fuzziness like recognizing "f" for "ph",
> or ignoring accents or whatever. If you're dealing with international
> users a case insensitive file system may save you a few rounds for
> figuring out "Fluffy" against "fluffy", but you'd still have to
> figure out "exposé" against "expose" or "foto" against "photo" and
> there is no way to solve that at file system level. Case is only a
> small part of the actual problem. This is clearly something that has
> to be dealt with in the UI libraries and not in the file system. And
> this is the reason why many people feel that a case insensitive file
> system is a ill-conceived hack. You can't really expect to deserve
> praise for painting yourself into a corner...
>
>
> Just my €0.02,
>
>         Jochem
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> macports-users mailing list
> macports-users at lists.macosforge.org
> http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macports-users
>