Re: [Freedos-user] Latex / long filenames

[Rugxulo <ru...@gm...>]

Hi,

(wow, sorry, I'm horribly late in replying)

On Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 12:27 PM Tomas By <to...@ba...> wrote:
>
> Am trying to use Latex (from DJGPP) in Freedos, and get errors
> seemingly having to do with long file names.

My memory isn't flawless, so corrections welcome, but ....

Most DJGPP .ZIPs halfway try to support SFNs and LFNs, but you may
have to unzip them twice: once with an LFN driver installed, and once
without!
Try "unzip32 -n" (to not overwrite) the second time. (Don't forget to
use a DJGPP unzipper!) Yes, this wastes space and duplicates files,
but it should work. At least, it did for the DJGPP compiler tools
themselves (a few years ago) for me.

> The "dir" command only shows 8+3, and when I manually rename using
> "move", the name gets truncated (rather than getting the tilde plus
> number).

FreeDOS "move" is not LFN aware. Most old 16-bit tools (and libraries
and compilers) aren't. So you should stick to DJGPP v2 (etc.) tools
like CoreUtils (ls, cp, mv, rm). For DJGPP, that would be FileUtils +
TextUtils + ShellUtils (fil41*b.zip, txt20*b.zip, shl2011*b.zip ...
something like that). Sorry, I don't remember exactly the ultra-latest
filenames or what is in which .ZIP.

* http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/getting.html
* http://djgpp.mirror.garr.it/current/v2gnu/fil41br3.zip
* http://djgpp.mirror.garr.it/current/v2gnu/txt20br3.zip
* http://djgpp.mirror.garr.it/current/v2gnu/shl2011br3.zip

FreeCOM is not perfect nor bug-free, but it should (ultimately) work
with LFNs. (You could also try the shell from EDR-DOS or 4DOS.)

I'd have to recheck MetaDOS, but I think by default I used "set
DIRCMD=/lfn" and "lfnfor on" and "lfnfor complete on" with (2006)
0.84-pre2 XMS_Swap FreeCOM. (I have not heavily tested newer releases
as much.)

* http://help.fdos.org/en/index.htm  (may be missing some info)
* https://github.com/FDOS/freecom/releases

> "doslfn" is loaded.

If a tool wasn't built using int 21h, 71xxh (Win95) APIs, it won't
support LFNs, even with a driver loaded.

* http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/07/32.html
* https://fd.lod.bz/rbil/interrup/dos_kernel/2171.html#3235

> Any known work-arounds? I don't think renaming all the files to eight
> chars would be practical.

Don't use "move" but instead DJGPP's (CoreUtils) "mv" if you need LFN
support (move / rename).

Most likely, there is no perfect answer for every .ZIP package. But I
would personally try re-downloading and re-installing Latex from DJGPP
mirrors and unzipping either with LFNs or without (or both!), if
needed.

Sorry if this isn't a perfect answer (I don't use Latex), but it
should give you some rough idea of what to do.