MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Copying Library to Windows from Linux (or other Windows installation)

BetterRed · 12-27-2014, 08:10 PM

The Windows legacy file i/o API's which is where the path length restrictions lie, and which every software vendor I know of uses, predate NTFS by several years.

IIRC they were inherited from the MS/IBM OS/2 partnership and HPFS. MS could have done what Apple did in the late 90,s with Next, and revamped Windows from the bottom up. But MS had and still has a huge user base, especially large corporate users. Apple managed to survive cutting off their already disaffected and dwindling user base - there's no way MS could have done that or even now do that.

The other issue is name casing - e.g. on most file systems in LinuxLand - mydata, myData, MyData, mYdATA, mYdAtA... MYDATA can coexist, in Windows they can't (nor in OSX if IIRC).

If you massage the library on Linux to ensure that no path length exceeds 250 characters (I think that'll be short enough) and you eliminate authors and titles that differ only in their character casing and you're happy to have the library at the root of a drive then you should be able to copy the library - I think

BR

12-27-2014, 08:10 PM	#7
BetterRed null operator (he/him) Posts: 21,982 Karma: 30277294 Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Sydney Australia Device: none	The Windows legacy file i/o API's which is where the path length restrictions lie, and which every software vendor I know of uses, predate NTFS by several years. IIRC they were inherited from the MS/IBM OS/2 partnership and HPFS. MS could have done what Apple did in the late 90,s with Next, and revamped Windows from the bottom up. But MS had and still has a huge user base, especially large corporate users. Apple managed to survive cutting off their already disaffected and dwindling user base - there's no way MS could have done that or even now do that. The other issue is name casing - e.g. on most file systems in LinuxLand - mydata, myData, MyData, mYdATA, mYdAtA... MYDATA can coexist, in Windows they can't (nor in OSX if IIRC). If you massage the library on Linux to ensure that no path length exceeds 250 characters (I think that'll be short enough) and you eliminate authors and titles that differ only in their character casing and you're happy to have the library at the root of a drive then you should be able to copy the library - I think BR Last edited by BetterRed; 12-27-2014 at 09:32 PM.