Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: tla1.2 on cygwin

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Aaron Bentley <address@hidden>

    > Tom Lord wrote:
    > > Oh sheesh.

    > > I happen to think that "careful use" is a complete solution to this
    > > problem.

    > > It really, really is just like filenames used as Java classes, header
    > > file names, tar file contents, etc.

    > It's not.  Placing category names in a global namespace means that no 
    > one should ever use a name that differs only in case from any other 
    > category name that anyone has ever used.  

That's nonsense.  If that were true for case insensitive names, it
would also be true for case sensitive category names (that no one
should re-use one for a distinctive purpose) --- the latter is false
and therefore so is the former.

There are a decent number of archives in the world that have nothing
to do with arch and never will.  Should any contain a category named
"TlA", so what?

    > Personally, I think people who use capital letters in their filenames 
    > are wierdos, and I'd be happy if this was solved by requiring that all 
    > category/branch names are lowercase.

A perfectly reasonable _convention_ to promote.


    > > If you put on blinders and try to think about this problem in
    > > isolation then, yeah, you can spend endless afternoons dreaming up
    > > application level solutions when really, a simple user-level
    > > _convention_ is as close to a 100% solution as you're going to find.

    > I don't think that's very close to a solution at all.

    > > The name mapping you suggest is cute but, of course, immediately falls
    > > apart as soon as encountered by a tool that doesn't use vu_.

    > Not "immediately".  The mapped names would be the same as the filesystem 
    > names, unless there was a conflict.

So, you propose to solve every case except those which display the
case sensitivity problem?

    > > In other news -- I really shudder to think what happens when case
    > > insensitive file systems meet Unicode.  Suddenly you're talking about
    > > embedding a fairly complex case canonicalization algorithm based on
    > > relatively huge data tables in every kernel and application that might
    > > ever need to compare a filename.  

    > Yeah.  Apparently win32 does support Unicode for filenames, though. 

Mmmhmm.   They aren't paradigmatic of the right way to do things,
generally speaking.

    > Consider that some languages have letters that exist in only one case.

Oh, it's far worse than just that.

-t