A question for makeing CD's for windows

[psyjax]

Ahhh...

Ok ok, this is not the right place for this, usualy I would be redirected to windowsBBS. But you guys know me, so help me out if you got an answer to this.

Basically, some friends came down to party for Halloween, and they are PC (that is Windows PC) users. I took a bunch of pictures with my digital cammera and am burning them a CD.

Im writting titles to all the images and they contain funny captions and stuff. I want to make sure that I don't violate any of those dumb ass forbidden character rules. I was wondering if there were such prohibitions with XP? Shit... what are the forbiden characters period?

When I use windows I just stick to plain characters and underscores.

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax v6.9 /Dave ]

[Calum]

you mean what can't you use in a filename in windows? well, your files must all end with extensions for a start (from what i remember, it's all mime types, not extensions with a mac), and they must all be less than 12q8 (or is it 112?) characters, although i think it's less than that for a CD anyway.

i think (and i could check this except i am not using windows right now! (hooray!)) that the characters you cannot use are \ ? ! " * $ | + and maybe one or two others (and / is allowed!). is anybody using windows reading this? if you are, you can find this out by trying to rename a file to ! and you will get a helpful dialogue telling you all the forbidden characters. oh yes, and the file won't be renamed either, so no need to worry about that.

[flap]

They don't have to have extensions.

[Calum]

why not? it's windows isn't it?

[flap]

Files under windows don't have to have extensions.

[slave]

quote:Originally posted by flap:
Files under windows don't have to have extensions.

Well, they do if you want your Windows apps to recognize the format.  Now, take a file in Linux (say a *.png or an *.avi file) and remove the extension.  It still knows what type of file it is. I'm not sure how it knows but it does.  Can anyone tell me how it knows?

[voidmain]

Yes, it's magic, literally. Do a "man magic", it uses file content rather then extention to determine a file type (much more reliable and makes 1000 times more sense). For instance type "file somefile" and it will let you know what it is. You can look through the /usr/share/magic file if you want to see what it looks for in a file to determine the type.

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Kintaro]

Yea actually file extensions are a good thing but a file extension for an executable or script is Windows's biggest flaw! WTF is with .exe .com .bat .cmd .vb and all teh other crap!

I mean think about this, a file with a +x (executable) type and a #!/path/to/scrpt/executor would make much more sence now wouldnt it!

Just another reason why Windows sucks

[Calum]

told you so!