[darcs-users] Huge mess moving to mac

[Yitzchak Gale]

Max Battcher wrote:
> I didn't mean for the original response to sound
> so flame-like.

I know. I hope you detected the tongue in my cheek. :)

I don't really think that Windows is as [adjective
deleted, rhymes with "grain-fed"] as it used to be.

But some people do. And they will continue to
use case-sensitive filenames, unless we remind
them not to.

> Personally, I've yet to
> see good usage of case-dependent filenames.

Besides Stephen Turnbull's two examples, here are
a few more:

o In German, case is _very_ meaningful linguistically.
o Even in English, there are some situations where
  case is the unique semantically distinguishing feature:
  "white house", "White House".
o For programmers, case is certainly significant.
  For example, here on the darcs list, you may have heard
  of a programming language called Haskell. In Haskell,
  case is very meaningful. So in a Haskell project,
  it is natural to use file names that reflect those semantics
  in an analagous way.

> There's a reason that two major Operating Systems
> ...both have made the choice (historically) to avoid
> case-sensitive file names.

The reason is that non-technical English speakers
are confused by it. But in a technical setting, it is
not always obvious that you have to remember to
avoid this, and yes, it might take a bit of extra
mental effort. So it would be nice to mention it
on the wiki.

> ...I mentioned several "easy" alternatives
> in Windows

OK, they should also be mentioned. Even though
they are not really Windows solutions, because
they involve running another OS. Except for:

> cygwin...

and

> Microsoft's Windows Services For Unix...
> Although, the Windows API... will barf at differently cased files.

Are you sure these work? AFAIK, case sensitivity is
built in to NTFS and FAT. So it is cygwin and SFU that will
barf, not the WinAPI.

Regards,
Yitz