Re: long filenames

[MGochnauer goch@xxxxxxxx]

Proper handling of long filenames awaits rewriting some of the core
XyWrite "engine" so that it is fully 32-bit. [Is that the right
number? I've drawn a blank. Sometime there in the 90's the Windows
world went from X-bit processing to 2*X-bit processing. XyWrite and
NB did not, but managed with work-arounds and Windows "legacy"
provisions.]
I've corresponded with NB about this, and came away with the
impression that the conversion was on the to-do list, but not just
around the corner.
This is deeply disappointing, especially as the Windows world begins
to inch toward 64-bit.
When XyWrite was purchased by The Technology Group, "Smartwords" was
supposed to be the next upgrade. Those of us on the XyWrite list kept
pressing TTG about whether Smartwords was 32-bit. The program never
appeared, and TTG disappeared, so none of us ever found out whether
the core-rewrite had been accomplished.
It seems to me that there are at least three reasons why NB has not
done the rewrite:
1) At the ordinary user level there would be no new "features", and
so it would be difficult to ask user to pay for an upgrade on this
alone.
2) Fiddling with foundational code risks an unpredictable number of
new bugs and hence a period of decreased stability, which makes it
even more difficult to ask users to pay for the upgrade.
3) The XyWrite core was written in Assembler, and few programmers
today are comfortable with such low-level programming.

Myron Gochnauer
Keeper of the Dogs
XyWriter since II+
> NB 8 Beta can't do long filenames. This is quite surprising and
> disappointing.
...
> And if you want to use NB to SAve a file named 123456789.NB, NB
> simply won't let you. It produces an error box saying: "Too many
> letters in file name."
...
> You have to remember that NB Windows is a bastard (even if a
> bastard that I kind of like !)--with new Windows stuff added on its
> XY DOS legacy. New stuff that's added seems all up to later
> Windows abilities (for better or for worse), but the passive legacy
> stuff seems pretty much left as it was. The legacy is nice for
> those of us who are in the habit of using old XY command line (and
> other) stuff.
> Among the things left untouched--i.e. in the legacy state--seem to
> be internal directory and file-name stuff, hence the truncation
> (which also happens when one appends the file name to a document as
> I like to do).
...
> I don't know enough to know whether changing the internal file
> names/directories stuff in NB would be easy or hard for NB. Unless
> someone here already know the answer, you might email "Steve" at NB
> in New York and ask about it. It would be nice to have long
> filenames work everywhere.