Mail Archives: opendos/1997/03/13/02:26:02
On Wed, 12 Mar 1997, Marty Leisner wrote:
>
> Mike Harris sez:
>
> > DOS doesn't have symlinks yet. Also, if we're going to have a
> > standard, a symlink is kindof pointless. symlinks could be used
> > for legacy apps, which mostly would work under the new system
> > anyway. Most DOS apps don't have their directories hard coded
> > into them.
> >
> >
>
> What? How long have you been using DOS?
9 years.
> I used join many, many moons ago.
As have I.
> I joined a: to /a.
>
> I broke just about every install program I have saw.
Granted. However, a symlink is not the same as JOIN in any way
shape or form. JOIN joins a drive letter to a subdirectory.
A symlink points to another file or another directory on the same
filesystem, or on any other filesystem.
> On windows, everything seems to install support files into
> <windows>/
> and
> <windows>/system
>
> without any control. Which is why whenever something breaks big time,
> the answer is:
> reinstall your system.
Yep. Windows should have had a STANDARD install program which
windows programmers MUST use, as well as a standard uninstall
program. Subdirectories would have also been very nice. ie:
<WINDOWS>\DLL - for all DLL files
<WINDOWS>\FONTS - for all fonts
<WINDOWS>\VXD
<WINDOWS>\INI
<WINDOWS>\BIN - for binaries that come with windows
<WINDOWS>\BITMAPS - for BMP/RLE/GIF images for windows
<WINDOWS>\SOUNDS - for windows cute little sounds
<WINDOWS>\SCR - Screensavers
...
It would make navigating the sh*t much easier. Also, NO programs
should be able to put files into the windows directories.
Instead there would be a matching tree like this:
<WINDOWS>\LOCAL\DLL - for all DLL files
<WINDOWS>\LOCAL\FONTS - for all fonts
If M$ had done this, we'd probably save ourselves from
reinstalling Windows every 10 minutes.
> Some vendor applications have hard coded path names on Unix -- very
> few applications insists on installing into /etc or /usr/bin or
> such...
This is a good thing. Then no matter which unix system you use,
you know where everything is.
> I think a DOS file system standard would be useful, one of the advantages
> of unix over dos was I can sit at a foreign unix machine and often
> understand where things were in 2 minutes. Dos was just a hodgepodge of
> customized paths.
Exactly what I just said. I hope we can work together to bring
this missing feature to OpenDOS!
Mike A. Harris | http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris
Computer Consultant | Coming soon: dynamic-IP-freedom...
My dynamic address: http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris/ip-address.html
mailto:mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca
4DOS is a very powerful COMMAND.COM replacement with over 80 commands!
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