[tex-live] Kpathsea in TL2007

[George N. White III]

On 2/18/07, Heiko Oberdiek <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de> wrote:

> > it is as insane (IMHO) as the Windows
> > default behaviour of /hiding/ file extensions.
>
> Agreed, this is one of the first things I change if I have to
> work on a windows system.

There are now people who used Windows at university who have never learned
to use extensions or to be careful about uppercase/lowercase when
entering filenames.
There some wonderful tricks, such as renaming file1, file2, ... to
File1, File2, ... to signal that some update was made to the files and
sending the project off to a colleague who
just started using linux and doesn't understand why the updates aren't
appearing.

At some point we have to admit that people will always invent schemes
that defeat overly clever interfaces, and go back to a simple and
direct mechanism (i.e., use filenames as entered without attempting to
supply extensions).  For the most common mistakes, the error message
could ask "did you mean to input file.tex?".

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia