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Date:         Wed, 3 Nov 93 13:51:49 CET
From: zach@IGD.FHG.D400.DE
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	id AA03911; Wed, 3 Nov 93 13:48:53 +0100
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 13:48:53 +0100
From: zach@igd.fhg.de
Message-Id: <9311031248.AA03911@dali>
To: LATEX-L@dhdurz1.bitnet.d400.de
Subject: Re: I do not like 'nf' in style names

Dear Michal,

sorry, but the only fairly reasonable point of your talk was the
thing about backwards compatibility !

"The last, but not the least point.  Quite a few OS-es is limited to
"eight characters in a base part of file names...
yes, it IS the least point ! as you state quite perfectly below:
  "You need an old Fortran mind to do that" !
this stupid eight characters limit is not LaTeX's problem, but is the
problem of those who wrote the stupid OS (or the problem of those
who use it :-| ).

"My next contention is that we all hope to see days when "New FSS" will
"become "Very Old and Tired FSS".  If this will happen, then names like
"'nftimes.sty' will sound somewhat stupid.

is this really an issue ???

In general, if LaTeX-users are too anxious about updating their documents,
it's their problem. People working under the motto
   "if ain't broke, don't fix it" , as you put it,
these people don't deserve better software.
When you come to sysadmins and the like:
"It also makes not so (La)TeX fluent users and system administrators much more
"reluctant to upgrade their systems"
i think, sysadmins will usually install a new LaTeX while leaving the old
one where it has been (and it will linger there for a long time, probably).
And if the changes in the documents can be done with an awk-script once
and for all, i don't see a problem.

"So what do you think?"

that's what i think.


Gabriel Zachmann

/-------------------------------------T--------------------------------------\
|        Fremd ist der Fremde         |                                      |
|        nur in der Fremde.           |  email: zach@igd.fhg.de              |
|        (Karl Valentin)              |                                      |
\-------------------------------------L--------------------------------------/