There are tricks worth knowing.
Even in textpad the only way to get a DOS filename to have no extension – not to be TXT – is to surround the filename in double quotes. Or save as a unix file. Then there are the protests of Windows Explorer when saving .anyrc files.
Had Windows required a file extension for every file, windoze might have become as marginal as the mac. No offense intended. Windows gave us “cd\” without the mandatory space character of “cd /”
Btw, the double-quote bit is essential if you are ever stuck using Ms Notepad
Now here’s the rub. Another little trick lets you put titles with a CRLF – mutli-line titles of your own choosing – on Windows desktop icons. But not in filenames.
Tangent to my point … Smalltalk folks sometimes get on a high-horse about types. It’s their hobbyhorse. As if the Symbol #-headed string is not as much a static types as you will ever need. And as much a worry if abused to the point of bloating. There is something to be said for software evolving to being typed as a prototype design evolves to a maintainable product. Optional typing is a feature in some powerful multi-paradigm languages.
Filenames are types. They even have evil proxy-types in the form of tilde-mangled 8.3 filenames. And they preclude the letters of my choosing as much as sets preclude dups and INT precludes a FLOAT.
But once is awhile I want a vertical filename
expect
libexpectexpectk
wish
blt
I remember the look which an IBM CUA-91 engineer from Boca gave me when I ventured my thoughts on 3-D widgets.
But if the SOM had survived in OS/3 we would not think twice about my having vertical filenames.
Now here is what an O-O desktop would give me on an O-O OS
That vertical filename would evolve as I reorganize the internal structure of that file on TCL Expect resources and related.
And its type is not ‘text’
Its type is
language
-resources and related
The closest thing that Windows offers, to my limited knowledge, is the virtual folder “My Documents”
But what of quote marks, quotation marks, if you will. This might be a useful type in and of itself.
If you have followed the Chronos project then you know that we have not yet put Date and Time to bed. But consider quotes.
PDF files will catch you with double-quotes-inverted and double-quotes-erect and you may not even notice. But there are languages where the opening quotes are not the ending quotes. I say this, entre-guimets, if you will.
The American-English QWERTY keyboard has its secrets for most American and Canadian users who type filenames. They may know that Microsoft is using tilde in mangled names but they themselves never reach up with the left pinky for the backtick key. These are not deep secrets, such as the left SH-key not being the same as the right SH-key or NUMPAD Enter not being the carriage return.
That the double quote on an electronic keyboard is not the single-quote sent twice may baffle digital archeologists in the year 5010.
The markup people know the answer. Have the keyboard send invisible markup codes with my every keystroke. The smart keyboard will ‘know’ whether I am typing in a text box or
You must be kidding. The keyboard – part of the OS ? Is this that Io mania?
But if the keyboard knew that the type that it was typing was a label on a desktop icon …
Imagination dead. Awful.
That’s for the keyboard which knows you are misquoting. Call it the Googleboard. The silent amanuesis. The foot-slogging pedagogue. We have crawled to the very lip on our brem.
