From: hugh@rschp1.anu.edu.au (Hugh Fisher)
Subject: Re: HP and windows NT
Organization: Research School of Chemistry, ANU
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 01:03:15 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.144643.16708@fwi.uva.nl>, casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:

   ...

|> Maybe so. But I want it to preserve case, so that some files
|> (README, Makefile) come first in an alfabetical list.
|> Also, yous kilfully deleted my argument that there is no
|> way that you can specify a case mapping that will satisfy all
|> 8bit locales.

   The Macintosh does just this, including 8 bit characters.
   ...

|> Religions start when people say ``our way is definitely better,
|> give is arguments/advantages for your way''. Real life is
|> case-senistive.  Filenames can be words, names, etc.
|> That the first computers weren't case-sensitive was
|> because they either lacked lowercase charsacters in the
|> character set or didn't have output devices able
|> to distinguish between lower and upper case. So, the case
|> insensitivity was not a choice by design but a choice made
|> because the cost of having two cases outweight the benefit AT THE TIME.
|> 
|> This is no longer true, so the default choice now should be:
|> ``we have case, we allow case in filenames, and filenames
|> with different case are different''.

   Real life, as opposed to the online existence of Usenet, is
   NOT CASE SENSITIVE. If I send snail mail, or better yet, a
   cheque, to "casper HS Dik" instead of "Casper HS Dik", are
   you going to tell the post office that it isn't meant for you?
   What would your reaction be if your bank refused to cash it
   because the name is wrong?

   I'd also like to point out that the Internet is not case
   sensitive either: I can ping/mail/etc to FWI.UVA.NL and
   get the same machine.

   The Macintosh and the Internet do it right: 'we have case,
   we allow case in names, and like real life we don't care
   whether you use upper or lower case'

|> The problem with not distinguishing between cases are twofold:
|> 
|> The system either talk back to you in monocase (so you can type
|> in anycase but the system will list in monocase, usually uppercase,
|> but hey, MS-DOS 5.0 now allows you to list in lower case, what a
|> big step) or the system remembers case typed (Macintosh).

|> In the first case, you'll have users complaining, I named the file ``Frank''
|> but I now have a file called ``frank''.

   Case sensitivity is worse. I waste far too much of my time telling
   people 'no, you _have_ to login in as 'joe' - the computer is too
   dumb to recognise 'Joe'. Ever tried to edit an X resource file?

|> In the second case, mysterious things will happen. ``I wrote the file
|> frank, but now the file Frank has gone''

   Mysterious to Unix nerds, not normal people. I have never (over six
   years) heard any Macintosh owner complain about this. Normal people
   are quite happy to accept that a new file 'frank' overwrites 'Frank'

|> 
|> The only users complaining about systems being case-sensitive are
|> those who previously worked with systems that weren't, this is an
|> artefact from old computers and operating systems. Should we maintain backward
|> compatibility with the past because of the backward users? I think not.

   Unfortunately this covers the majority of computer users. As has
   been pointed out before, the installed base for each of MS-DOS,
   Macintosh, and MS-Windows is greater than all the Unix systems
   ever built. When you add in VMS and IBM mainframes, case insensitive
   systems are by far the norm.

|> The only argument put forward for case-insensitivity is that
|> ``real life is not case-sensitive''. That is obviously not true.

   This merely confirms the general view of Unix programmers/users:
   living in a world of their own. How many times does it have to
   be said? Real life is not case sensitive.

|> The only things on this earth that were not case-sensitive at
|> some point in time(*) are old fashioned computers and their operating
|> systems.

   And modern computers, and their operating systems: VMS, MacOS,
   OS/2 were all designed well after Unix.


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