[texhax] installation of TEX

[Victor Ivrii]

On 2/8/07, Philip Taylor (Webmaster) <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Pierre MacKay wrote:
>
> > I suspect the answer may be quite simple.  Windows is infuriatingly
> > literal about suffixes, and never bothers to read the first ten or so
> > bytes of a file (used by the Linux/Unix "file" command) to determine the
> > type and content.
>
> Thank the Lord for that !  Why /any/ operating system should believe
> that it can unambiguously identify a file by reading the first few
> bytes remains a complete mystery to me; surely operating system
> designers know that /binary/ files are just that, and that
> given infinite time, and an infinitely large room containing
> an infinite number of monkeys,  every possible byte pattern can
> and will occur in every position in an arbitrary binary file.

Unfortunately some extensions are overused.

Also few versions ago MSIE defied w3 recommendations and defined MIME
type of the web file from its extension rather than to listen the
communication from the web server. It did not work on the web and M$
followed the voice of reason.


>
> > For example, a TIFF file with a suffix .tiff, will be
> > rejected as unreadable until you rename it as .tif.
>
> Not true : all that is necessary is to add .TIFF (or .tiff,
> if you prefer) to the list of known file extensions and
> to associate it with the same set of semantics as are
> currently ascribed to .TIF (or .tif) files ...
>
>  > Any suffix unknown
> > to Windows will be rejected as unreadable.
>
> Not "as unreadable", simply as "unknown", at which point
> it behoves the informed user to teach Windows about the
> new file extension ...
>
> >  A file with the .tex suffix
> > or the .ltx suffix will almost certainly be rejected; .dvi even more so.
> > The original query does not suggest that the correspondent would be
> > comfortable reading a .tex or .ltx source file, and a .dvi file would be
> > hopeless in that context.
> >
> > If you are condemned to work in a Microsoft environment,
>
> or "privileged", depending on your point of view ...

Why 99% of the spam I received is sent from computers privileged to
run Windows?  :-)





-- 
========================
Victor Ivrii, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii