Conference vaxuum::online_bookbuilding

222.0. "A query and a request, both" by DECWET::TARDIFF (It's all rock-and-roll to him.) Fri Nov 10 1989 02:16

This is partially a question for Mary Utt, but also a query addressed to
the general readership.

Bookreader for ULTRIX is just now emerging from our software ovens, smelling
fresh and delicious.  It'll soon be in your local (Digital-internal) grocery...

DOCUMENT remains, for now, the only formatter on the planet that produces
Bookreader-format files, so the books we're building to read on the
Bookreader come from SDML source files, and we use the online bookbuilding tools.
A typical bookshelf file, produced along with the book file, looks like this:

  BOOK\HOW-BOOKREADER\ULTRIX Online Information Status and Plans

Would anyone have a problem if Mary & Co. changed the filename (HOW-BOOKREADER
in the example) to lowercase (how-bookreader)?

Why do we care?  We build our books on VMS using DOCUMENT, then we copy them
to a Bookreader directory on an ULTRIX machine using a DECnet copy command
option that transforms the VMS filespec to a file name more suitable for
UNIX systems:

	HOW-BOOKREADER.DECW$BOOKSHELF;1  --->  how-bookreader.decw_bookshelf

UNIX treats $ and ; as shell metacharacters, which gets in the way of easy
access to a file named using them, so DECnet converts $ to _ and deletes the
version number.  DECnet also converts all uppercase to lowercase.  None of these
changes are vital, but they make accessing the file a whole lot more convenient.
The case-change makes the file fit in with other ULTRIX files better;
because UNIX is case-sensitive, most filenames tend to be mostly lowercase,
with uppercase used for emphasis or separation, just like in English (and
in DECnames...)

If the bookbuilding tools wrote the filename in lowercase, we could use
the DOCUMENT-generated bookshelf file as-is.  As it stands now, we
have to edit the bookshelf file to change the filename to lowercase,
or run the bookshelf through a filter that does that automatically.

Given that VMS doesn't care if the filename in the bookshelf is uppercase,
lowercase, or a mixture of both, I don't see any negative effect on VMS
users.  Does anyone see something I don't?  And if no one does, is it possible
for this change to get into the next version of the bookbuilding tools, Mary?

Cheers.

+ Michael