On 16/09/2008 04:06, Brian Barker wrote:
At 23:44 15/09/2008 +0100, Harold Fuchs wrote:
On 15/09/2008 22:10, Jim Allan wrote:
Harold Fuchs wrote:
Personally I think that the checking of a file name for legality is
the job of the OS and not of the application but that's just me.
You might think so, until you send a file to a system where the user
can't read it, or vice versa. [...]
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.
May I please rehearse an alternative viewpoint?
One of the obvious needs for document files is their exchange between
users, and users may have different platforms. If I save, say, an odt
file on my system, I may wish to transmit it to you by some means.
If, with your suggestion, I can use any file name that my operating
system allows, it may transpire to be an illegal name under your
system. We are not talking about "migration" here - at least as I
understand that term: I merely want to be able to send you a document
file and - especially if I am an ordinary user - I need to be able to
do this without being troubled to know what your operating system may
be, still less what its idiosyncrasies are.
Under your proposed arrangement, if I send you a file and tell you
what it is called, you may well have difficulty finding it. Either
its name will be a problem for your operating system and it will be
inaccessible, or perhaps its name will have been regularised in some
unpredictable fashion for your system and it will no longer match what
I tell you the file is called. In each case the ordinary user may be
at least confused or even unable to find and use the document. On the
other hand, if any application software capable of saving in this
format lays down more restrictive rules for file naming than most
operating systems and allows only names which will be acceptable to
all or most operating systems, it will be possible for me to save a
document and be confident that any user that can use the format will
be able to use the file.
I've no idea where OpenOffice stands on this issue. But I do know
that one of its professed advantages is its availability for a range
of platforms. I imagine the same goes for Open Document Format.
Brian Barker
You make a good point. However, if every application adopted its own
rules about what constitutes a legal file name you'd get the most
horrible mess even within a single OS, let alone across OS's. Just as an
example I could easily envisage OOo Writer not being able to process (or
even find) a document saved, by MS Word because Word had allowed a file
name that Writer can't handle, possibly even on the same computer.
Letting the OS make these decisions at least protects the user from that
sort of situation. Admittedly it doesn't solve the cross OS problem but
I'm willing to bet that that's a much rarer case.
In addition, putting the enforcement of naming rules in the OS makes it
much easier when and if someone eventually defines a widely accepted
standard for such things. Instead of having to certify/change a very
large number of applications you'd only need to deal with a handful of OS's.
--
Harold Fuchs
London, England
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