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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">barbara beeton wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:9adf4aa0-556e-a9ac-356f-b2c6ddaa8f2e@tug.org"><br>
A 3-letter file extension has nothing to do with DOS, which didn't
even
<br>
exist when TeX was being developed. It's a limit of the SAIL
operating
<br>
system for the DECSystem 10, on which TeX and MF were developed.
The
<br>
limit for file names was 6.3. Traces of this can still be seen in
the
<br>
names of the Computer Modern fonts, several of which would be more
<br>
easily understood with a few more letters in their names.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well, Barbara is never wrong, by definition, but CP/M, which
pre-dates both MS/DOS and TeX, (CP/M having been born in 1974) also
used an 8.3 filen-aming convention :<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">[<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M">CP/M</a>] File names
were specified as a string of up to eight characters, followed by
a period, followed by a file name extension of up to three
characters (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.3_filename">"8.3"
filename format</a>). The extension usually identified the type
of the file. For example, <code>.COM</code> indicated an
executable program file, and <code>.TXT</code> indicated a file
containing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII">ASCII</a>
text.
</blockquote>
<br>
<i>Philip Taylor</i><br>
<br>
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