6 Filesystems considerations

Win32 supports multiple filesystems:

• DOS FAT, 8.3 and uppercase filenames
• Protected mode Fat, long filenames, but case-insensitive
• NTFS, long filenames and case-sensitive
• ISO9660 CDROM, 8.3 and uppercase filenames

Moreover, Win32 calls which refer to filenames are case-insensitive. There are several other features in NTFS that Win32 can't use for the moment. Another dimension is the use of different directory separators: / or \, but Win32 calls accept both.

So what difficulties may arise ?

Most likely, you will have some style files with long filenames. If you are running on a filesystem which supports them⁸, there is no problem and you have nothing to do. Otherwise, you will need to use the alias feature of kpathsea (Refer to the kpathsea manual). Say for example you are trying to install texmf on a FAT partition and you have the style file named longtable.sty in you tree. The filename will be truncated to its 8.3 form : longtabl.sty. In this case, you will need to create a file named aliases along to the ls-R file in you texmf tree. This file should contain the following line:

There is an example of aliases file in $TEXMF/aliases. All references to longtable.sty will be redirected to longtabl.sty as long as the long filename is not found.

Otherwise, if you think you have trouble with filenames, consider doing the following:

• paths in config files and environment variables are preferred written with / rather than \;
• ls-R databases should be in lower case, even if you are running on FAT or CD-ROM;
• use the debug feature of \kpathsea{} and kpsewhich to demonstrate you problem and email me the results of your investigations.