X-no-Archive:yes Ferenc, Issue number 1 is definitely a problem with FAT and MS' implementation of long file names under FAT. When Windows 95 was introduced, it brought in a new file system, on the access side. A lot of the work had already been done under Windows 3.11, with respect to the 32-bit access to the disc and files, and Windows 95 bundled it in and added 32 bit support to all other devices. However, Windows 95 could not properly implement a LFN strategy, without forcing people to reload their systems (which virtually nobody would want to do), or going through a transformation. Again virtually nobody would want to do this transformation, as they would lose compatibility with prior releases of Windows, and it would introduce all sorts of problems with existing software. If you remember when Windows 95 was introduced, the naysayers were everywhere, all saying it was going to be a disaster and that people would have insurmountable problems. A few of them were on this very list. Windows 95 introduced a lot of new technology which did have problems with some of the legacy hardware and software. Imagine if people would have had to reload their systems, or transform their file system. Remember, Windows 95 was introduced when the 486 was still being sold, ISA-only and VL-bus were prevalent, PCI was just starting to catch on, and the big disk drives were 1 GB. (PnP really does work much better with PCI.) So MS elected to implement the LFN in the directory, taking up multiple directory entries to hide an LFN for a file. The problem on a floppy is the file system is FAT12, 12 bits long, with the directory to match. So if you have a lot of very small files and you want to give them very long names, you burn up the directory entries very quickly. It is an arcane problem but one which is very real. Blame MS for not forcing people to reload their systems in order to have a proper file system such as NTFS. That's what you get when you try to keep compatibility. The only way you can have LFN on MPE is through the POSIX shell, and look how long it has taken to get to the point where POSIX is really usable on MPE. We still hear about and discuss The Wall between POSIX and MPE. BTW, This problem also exists in the root directory on Windows 95, you can only have 512 file entries in that directory. Never keep more than just a few file in \ and eschew the long file names for those files. The other directories are where you should keep your files anyways. Very similar to root in UNIX or PUB.SYS on MPE. Windows 95B AKA OSR2 introduced FAT32 as a file system, but it is really just FAT16 with 32 bit pointers. It allows one to take advantage of large disk drives, without losing tremendous amounts of storage to slack space. Windows NT on the other hand, does not suffer from that problem on hard drives. NTFS was designed with LFN in mind, including UNICODE file names, of which you probably would make use. This is where a special character such as an umlaut or a cedilla is a valid character in the file name, all 8 bits are usable in the character. Windows NT however, still uses FAT12 when it comes to floppy disks, so the problem you encountered is still real even on NT. Now, point 2 is really getting picky. I find it hard to fault a software, the English version of the software, for not recognizing a non-English method of automatically labeling figures. On the other hand, a lot of people and most of the industry press has been jumping on MS and other software companies for producing bloatware, software with so many features and options that it becomes unmanageable, huge and gobbles up incredible amounts of system resources. It has also been found that most people, do not make use of even a fraction of the features of such software. And yet you want even more features. On point 3, that is a valid point, however, I believe there is a remedy. Word gets the date from the system's regional settings. Start->Control Panel->Regional Settings->Date tab and look at the long date format. This may solve your problem, but I can't tell as I do not have any version other than English installed. I always thought MS did a creditable job with localization. Then again, I have seen other language version, such as the French one, and the messages can be quite comical. (I am an MSDN subscriber, and it never ceases to amaze me to see the number of language specific versions in which the MS products are available. Even Japanese and Chinese with 16 bit characters.) Finally, there is no address that I know of, where you can sell mail to MS and be assured it is read. Who do you think you are dealing with, HP CSY, Hicomp? Kind regards, Denys. . . Denys Beauchemin HICOMP America, Inc. (800) 323-8863 (281) 288-7438 Fax: (281) 355-6879 denys at hicomp.com www.hicomp.com -----Original Message----- From: Dr. Ferenc Nagy [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Thursday, 21 May, 1998 4:20 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Off topic: Additions to Bill Gates's complaints book (Windows 95 and Word 6.0, 7.0) Gentle list members, I have met three unpleasant things recently: 1) Not informative error message under Windows'95: We got some diskettes with many small Wind Word files on them. Each file had a long name which did not match with their short 8.3 name. WE wanted to rename each file in order to their 8.3 name match to their contents. We began to edit the redirected directory made in the DOS window of the Windows'95. When we wanted to save the RENAME.BAT file, the system refused it. It gave an error number and an error message. There were plenty of free space on the diskette. We found out that the file could not be created because the area preserved for the long Windows'95 names on the diskette was full. THIS FACT SHOULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN CLEARLY IN THE ERROR MESSAGE OF THE SYSTEM! 2) Sticking to English word order in WinWord 6.0. I wanted to use the Capture feature of the English version of WinWord 6.0. This feature adds labels to figures, pictures and other attachments. When I wanted to edit the label, I could get only labels like "Figure 1", but 1 could not get labels like "1st figure", however, in Hungarian the word order and the custom is 1. ordinal number 2. noun ["1. a'bra"]. 3) How the computers force to change the Hungarian spelling: The spelling checker of the Hungarian WinWord 7.0 (and lower) contains the months with English-like capital letters "Szeptember", instead of the currently valid "szeptember". Most people are lazy to correct the automatically offered date, therefore I got regularly documents with incorrect Hungarian spelling of dates. If somebody knows a mailbox of the Microsoft where they _do_read_the_letters, please help me forward my complaints. Regards Frank |\ /~ ~~|~~~ Family : NAGY; first name : FERENC; title : Ph. D. | \ | | Institute of Isotope and Surface Chemistry | \ | -+- H-1121 BUDAPEST Konkoly-Thege M. ut 29, (1525 Bp. POB 77) | \ | | [log in to unmask] (36-1)-395-9123 Fax: ~395-9002 | \| | http://alpha0.iki.kfki.hu/~nagyf/ `-' ' `-' Home: H-1102 BUDAPEST Holgy u. 48. I. 8. (36-1)-262-1198. You need three virtues in the life: 1. strength - to change the things which are changeable, 2. patience - to endure the things which are unchangeable, 3. wisdom - to distinguish the above two kinds of things.