2009/4/8 Oleh R. Nykyforchyn oleh.nyk@gmail.com:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2009 09:46:26 -0600 Erich Hoover ehoover@mines.edu wrote:
On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Luke Benstead kazade@gmail.com wrote:
...
This is probably a really dumb question... but why does wine support UNIX paths? What is the circumstance where a Windows application will be trying to access a native file or directory? The only example I can think of is that an app has specifically been written to be used in Wine, in which case, shouldn't native UNIX paths be disabled by default, and perhaps turned on with an environment variable?
Luke.
I personally enjoy the ability to use UNIX paths both in calling applications with command-line arguments and in file dialogs (even if it is necessary to use the wrong slash in dialogs). I imagine that there are a lot of people that appreciate the ability to use this functionality, since you can use the "familiar paths" you do not need to be familiar with the windows drive mapping.
Erich Hoover
I also use wine in somewhat weird way. E.g. I use WinEdt editor under wine to edit TeX files, and it can launch Linux executables like latex, xdvi, dvips and so on. WinEdt takes native Unix paths when it opens files and then passes them to Linux executables. I cannot rely on WinEdt the task to convert Win paths to Unix ones. Thus, if this feature is dropped, I will not be able to use such mixed Win-Lin environments. I believe that Wine should preserve it present behaviour as default and turn on some special treatment of Unix paths (with prefixes etc) on demand, possibly on per-application basis.
Oleh Nykyforchyn
I disagree. Wine should treat paths *by default* like they are Windows paths. UNIX paths should be identified in the way that Alexandre suggested, with a prefix. That's the best way to make sure that all Windows programs will work as they should, and still allow for UNIX paths. Don't worry, I don't think anyone is suggesting removing UNIX paths completely :)
Luke.