I have not used the path rext but if it worked like path in MSDOS or Unix vatriants it would solve a lot of problems.
A Path could be set up to cover all your program directories and then a program will able to find its help, configurration or other files because it will be in the path. Data$ can be set to ones "home directory" Prog$ can be set to start up program directory. I have skipped the correspondence about long file names, but both MSDOS and Unix use files as directories. These could contain the long directory names and the actual directory name which is a single byte allocated by the system (if 256 directories is enough!). The system could automatically create the directory files and use them. Hence on an old system the existing file names would work but a new system would be able to cope with longer file name trees. There could be a conversion program that read the existing directory tree and converted it to the new system. We would just have to ensure that when we distributed programs they could work on the old system but those with hard disks and the latest version of SMSQE could enjoy longer file, directory names and trees. Rather similar to the long file name change in Windows This would seem to me to offer the advantage of backward compatablity with advantages for those with big hard drives. _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
