Message-Id: <9210021426.AA26574@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Fri, 2 Oct 92 14:24:07 BST
From: CHAA006@VAX.RHBNC.AC.UK
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      RE: RE How to get rid of most users of TeX
Status: R


[Modification to font name extensions/filetypes]

>>> I find this suggestion very interesting and would suggest that this
>>> should be discussed further in the TeX community and on the
>>> TeX-implementors list since this has only a chance when it would
>>> become a standard in all TeX and MF change files!!

I would like to argue against the proposal [and my apologies for using
the wrong forum, but Frank clearly has set a precedent, and I'm not sure
how to send mail to TeX-Implementors :-(]

I believe that the existing filetypes/extensions are so well established
that to change them now would be catastrophic.  Instead, I would like to
advocate the use of `virtual file systems'.  It has already been shewn by
programs such as `Stacker' [1] that one can implement file systems within file
systems; it would therefore be possible for a virtual file system to accept
arbitrarily complex filenames and re-map them to either o/s-limited real names
or to sub-files of a container file (c.f. Eberhard Mattes' .FLI files).  If
access to such virtual files were always through the medium of the virtual file
system, the mapping could be both entirely arbitrary and totally concealed.

					Philip Taylor, RHBNC

[1] Stacker: an MS/DOS program for compressing/decompressing files in real time.