I think that we are off topic here. I'm not getting a message that the file name is invalid. Rather, OOo gives me the message "You cannot save in the URL location you specified. Please choose another location." This implies something completely different, in that OOo seems to think I'm specifying a location that is inaccessible or not understood. If that is not the intention of the message, then it should be changed to better reflex it's meaning.
I'm trying too understand what's going that leads to that message. On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 8:52 AM, Jim Allan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Harold Fuchs wrote: > >> But this is exactly my point. It shouldn't be up to the program. The >> program shouldn't have to "be able to handle it". The program shouldn't >> know. The program should just trap the error generated by the OS and tell >> the user what the OS said. >> >> Moving stuff from one OS to another is an issue but any decent migration >> guide will bring it to the implementer's attention. >> > > But the implementer is likely to be a user who has never read any decent > migration guide, or has read it years ago, and doesn't now recall anything > about illegal characters. > > I agree that your belief that the program "shouldn't know" is one way of > looking at this problem. > > But the OpenOffice.org programming staff has chosen instead to permit only > the minimal set of characters allowed in filenames on all systems on which > OpenOffice.org runs, so that the user can be sure that whatever file they > output should run on any system to which the file is transferred. > > The OpenOffice philosophy appears to be that OpenOffice ought to run almost > exactly the same on every system, which means that of necessity that it must > limit the characters allowed in filenames, which in effect means allowing > only those characters allowed on the MS-Dos/Windows systems and perhaps even > fewer characters. > > Many Linux users complaint about the Unicode BOM character, for example, > though I don't recall anyone ever complaining about this in a file name. > > Also some characters, while technically allowed on a Linux system, will > break shell expansions, pipes, etc, etc. Samba has more limitations than > does Linux which in most systems only disallows the "/" character and the > NUL character. > > Many Linux users complaint about the Unicode BOM character, for example, > though I don't recall anyone ever complaining about this in a file name. > > I think it more helpful to a user to disallow characters that ought not be > to be used because they sometimes cause problems, than to allow everything, > as the numerous talks about this on the web indicates that applications > producing files with illegal or problemical characters is something that > comes up again and again. The problem especially occurs with networks that > have mixed operating systems in their servers. > > And somehow these files with characters that are illegal on a particular > system do get onto the drives, presumably through applications that follow > your philosophy that applications ought not to know about such things. > > At least on most systems all file names are now in the Unicode character > set which avoids many previous problems. > > Jim Allan > > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- Government big enough to supply everything...is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases --- Thomas Jefferson www.CampaignForLiberty.org
