Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 11:57:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Evan Dickinson <evand AT wsunix DOT wsu DOT edu>
Reply-To: evand AT scn DOT org
To: OpenDOS Mailing List <opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net>
Subject: Re: [opendos] Wishlist v2.0 
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On Sat, 15 Mar 1997 dg AT dcs DOT st-and DOT ac DOT uk wrote:
[snip]
> manufacturers, and is completely baseless. A 286 is sufficient for most 
> people's needs. Only a tiny proportion of the vast capability of modern 
> machines is actually used for useful work; the rest is frittered away on 
> things like the user interface.)
Amen.

[more snip]
> I'm afraid it's safe to say that there aren't going to be many new programs 
> written specifically for OpenDOS. I think that most programs are going to be 
> either old MS-DOS ones or new MS-DOS ones. Neither are going to abide by a 
> OpenDOS file system standard.
A truth we should remember when discussing new standards.

[yet more snip]
> Actually, the main problem I find is the path limitation. If you could specify 
> large search paths it's relatively trivial to keep your hard drive organised. 
> Unfortunately, while >128 char paths are possible, they're difficult, and >256 
> char paths are even more so. Currently I have:
> 
> 	C:\SYSTEM\OPENDOS
> 	C:\SYSTEM\UTILS
> 	C:\SYSTEM\HARDWARE
> 	C:\SYSTEM\NETWORK
> 	...
> 
> What I'd really *like* is:
> 
> 	C:\SYSTEM\OPENDOS
> 	C:\SYSTEM\UTILS\ARCHIVERS
> 	C:\SYSTEM\UTILS\GNUISH
> 	C:\SYSTEM\UTILS\EDITORS
> 	C:\SYSTEM\UTILS\PROGRAMMING
> 	[...]
> 	C:\SYSTEM\HARDWARE\SOUND
> 	C:\SYSTEM\HARDWARE\NETWORK
> 	C:\SYSTEM\HARDWARE\VIDEO
> 	[...]
> 	C:\SYSTEM\NETWORK\NCSA
> 	C:\SYSTEM\NETWORK\CRYNWR
> 	[...]
> 
> This would avoid problems like my UTILS directory being so big that I can't 
> see it all on the screen at once. Perhaps a feature to search a directory *and 
> subdirectories* on the path? How complex would that be?
> 
Well, we could put wildcards in the path.  So we'd have something like:
path=c:\utils\*;c:\system\*;c:\opendos

I'd imagine this would probably break compatibility with older programs
that search the path.  The easiest fix would be a batch file like this:
set oldpath=path
set path=something without wildcards
oldprgram
set path=oldpath
set oldpath=

But I would prefer to see a more elegant solution.  Ideas anyone?