Subject: renaming of misc. to MISC

From: [email-masked] (Rex Monty Di Bona)
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1991 16:39:00 +1100

the purpose of renaming misc.  to MISC was two fold.  The first was that
'misc.' was taken as a domain name of 'misc'.'' which made versions of
the code crash, the null domain was not very nice.  The other was to make
it very unlikely that anybody had a similar name.  We used a routine
'lower' to move all the domain names into lowercase, which reduced the
need for a COM, a com, an AU/OZ, an AU/oz, and an au/oz directories.  So
having the MISC name in uppercase, and inserted into the search after
the case conversion guaranteed that it wouldn't match any normal users'
domain.

					Rex.

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From: richb@stard (Rich Burridge)
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1991 16:51:19 +1100

} the purpose of renaming misc.  to MISC was two fold. 
} ...

Thanks Rex.

I suspect I can remove a few entries from the TODO file now that the new
face directory lookup is working nicely.

Which of the following is still a problem with anyone in faces v1.6.1 ?

-------

*  From Lindsay F. Marshall <[email-masked]>
   The domain name munging (i..e a.b.c -> b.c -> c) doesnt
   seem to work at all, and of course its the wrong way round
   for the uk anyway.

*   From John Mackin <[email-masked]>
    A comment on the domain lookup algorithm. According to the manual page:

           $DIR/machine.dom.ain/uid/iconname
           $DIR/dom.ain/uid/iconname
           $DIR/ain/uid/iconname
           $DIR/misc./uid/iconname
           $DIR/machine.dom.ain/unknown/iconname
           $DIR/dom.ain/unknown/iconname
           $DIR/ain/unknown/iconname
           $DIR/misc./unknown/iconname

    This leads to a top-level directory with a _lot_ of subdirectories.
    I think this is responsible for much of faces' CPU time; it's well
    known that large directories are a UNIX performance no-no. What I
    would like to see instead (or in addition, or as an option, perhaps
    compile-time) is the following.

           $DIR/ain/dom/uid/iconname
           $DIR/ain/uid/iconname
           $DIR/misc./uid/iconname
           $DIR/ain/dom/machine/unknown/iconname
           $DIR/ain/dom/unknown/iconname
           $DIR/ain/unknown/iconname
           $DIR/misc./unknown/iconname

    The idea is that at each level, if the next component exists and is
    a directory, you descend into it and look there.

*   From John Buckle <[email-masked]>
    With faces v1.4, I've been having trouble in sorting out my faces
    directory path. On the old version (v1.3) I used -f .faces, this meant
    that my directory was searched last which also meant that my misc. face
    was used.  Using FACEPATH I haven't been able to do this, it either seems
    to use one directory or the other, but not both.

        FACEPATH=:.faces        - uses /n/faces/misc. for things stored .faces

        FACEPATH=.faces:        - uses my misc. for things in /n/face

    Further comment from John Mackin <[email-masked]>
    This effectively means that under 1.4, you cannot have your own
    misc./unknown icons. The first directory in the FACEPATH to contain a
    misc./unknown icon will be the last directory searched; any directories
    after that will be silently ignored. An unfortunate sude-effect of the
    make_iconname() routine.

---

From: Philippe-Andre Prindeville <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 15:33:22 +0100

|*  From Lindsay F. Marshall <[email-masked]>
|   The domain name munging (i..e a.b.c -> b.c -> c) doesnt
|   seem to work at all, and of course its the wrong way round
|   for the uk anyway.

Or rather, the UK is the wrong way around for it.  And the wrong way
around for most of our mail users, and the wrong way around for ...
Let's not bring the broken addressing of the UK into this.

-Philip