[twg-tds] question about file names

[Karl Berry]

Hi Bernard,

    1) more than 8 chars file names

I don't see a problem with using long filenames at this point.  I rather
doubt TeX Live itself would be usable on an 8.3 filesystem these days.
(I know the Unix side wouldn't be.)

    and 2) a separator like "-" for the second one, 

Here, I personally would advise against using both _ and - as
separators.  Not for technical reasons, but because it's extremely prone
to confusion by humans.  I don't think it especially matters whether _
or - is used, but I suggest picking one or the other.

For the <language> part of the name, I'd suggest using some pre-existing
list of names, perhaps the ISO abbreviations used for $LANG, or babel
names, or something.  Better than making up yet another language list,
seems to me.

    A way could be to identify the localizer just thru a new
    file name extension, e.g. lan_pack.msg
    but it's still not very usable.

If they are TeX input files, a .tex extension seems like the right thing
to me.

    level in the tree and a lot of file names "english.tex" or
    "english.msg" will poluate the texmf.

Yep, exactly right.  So I think the long-filename approach you suggest
is the way to go.

Those are my views, for what it's worth ... others may chime in at will :).

Best,
karl