why is e.g. web2c in the texmf tree?

[Sebastian Rahtz]

 > You are right, but in my opinion this is a bad design of the program which
 > converts long names to RockRidge. I believe that in 99% you can arrange
 > long names in either 8.3 or 5+3.3 using lowercase (or uppercase)
i dont think the program i use (mkisofs) is standard in any way, so i
am not sure there is a predictable algorithm. 
 
 > Perhaps the people of the TeX live CD could do some research in this
 > direction so people under DOS can use it too. 
you can use 99% of TeX Live with DOS. I have done it several
times. its unbelievably slow, of course! but modern 
web2c for DOS will sort that

 > AFAIK there is no CD driver even for OS/2 which supports RockRidge...
what file names, in common practice, cause any problems, apart from
longtable?

sebastian