Subject: Re: ASCII and BINARY files. Why?
From: [email-masked] (Fergus Henderson)

29 Jan 1997 04:48:43 -0800
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
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Content-Type: text
Original-To: [email-masked] (Jim Balter)
Original-Cc: [email-masked] (gnu-win32)
In-Reply-To: <[email-masked]> from "Jim Balter" at Jan 28, 97 12:08:52 pm
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Original-Sender: [email-masked]

Jim Balter, you wrote:
> 
> Fergus Henderson wrote:
> > 
> > Le me repeat: we're trying to port GNU software to Windows.
> > Do you have a better suggestion on how to do this?
> 
> [...] yes, I suggest that the approach that has been taken by AT&T's
> UWIN, of abandoning the text/binary distinction altogether,
> is the best, most robust, lowest surprise factor, lowest cost
> approach.

That approach makes interoperability between gnu-win32 software and
non-gnu-win32 software impossible.  It is *not* a low suprise factor
approach, because users will be continually surprised when they try to
use gnu-win32 tools on a Windows text file, or use Windows tools on a
gnu-win32 text file.

(Incidentaly, gnu-win32 already optionally supports that approach: you
can mount filesystems in binary mode.  It's not the default, for
reasons stated above.)

> Files that contain CR's can be filtered,

That would break POSIX compatibility, and would cause lots of suprises
for binary files that happen to contain CRs.

> and/or the library
> could allow a special name form such as dos:filename that causes it to
> open the file in "text" mode.

Well, that's a constructive suggestion, but (a) requiring users to use
a special filename would be very inconvenient and error-prone,
and (b) that still doesn't solve the problem of using Windows tools on
gnu-win32 text files.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <[email-masked]>   |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger [email-masked]         |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.
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