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filenameconventions

This file was 00_dancing_standards.txt on the “dancing music” laptop computer.

John C. Nash 2007-3-3

This file is intended to describe the “rules” that I have used in trying to build a coherent and useful collection of English and American dance music and instructional notes.

General

Where possible, I have used plain text files for instructions and notes. However, “plain text” does differ across operating systems, though most text editors are smart enough to recognize the differences. Linux ends lines with a line-feed (LF, ASCII 10) character. Macintosh uses a carriage-return (CR, ASCII 13), while Microsoft DOS/Windows uses a two-character pair CR LF (ASCII 13, 10).

The instructional and notes files are not fully commented. I propose to use tags much as SGML or HTML or XML such as <notes> <caller suggestion> <todo!>

with corresponding ending tags </notes>, </caller suggestion>, </todo!>.

File names

Because different operating systems have different requirements for filenames, I have opted to simplify filenames so that the collection is portable.

- All spaces have been replaced with underscore (_) - All quotes, commas, semicolons, colons, exclamation, question

      brackets, equals, plus, tilda, ampersand etc. have been 
      removed
      ,'";:{}[[]]()=+?!~&
      & is replaced with _and_ for safety, since & is used
      in a number of web-type applications.

- <todo>I have not scanned for filename length, but there is a

      limit in many operating systems. I would like to suggest
      a 100 character limit to filenames.<!todo>

In giving files names, I have suppressed “A” and “The” at the beginning, in fact not included them at all. In the names I have not capitalized 'a' or 'the'.

Special files

Many dances use lots of different possible music. Linux allows a “symbolic link” and this allows us to include filenames for the music easily. The Linux command

      ln -s Our_Special_Music.mp3 Our_Funny_Name.music.mp3

will set up a very small file Our_Funny_Name.music.mp3 that simply points to Our_Special_Music.mp3. There may be many pointers to this file, so we don't need multiple copies. Note that it is important to have the .mp3 name at the end of the link to cause file browsers (I use Gnome browser in Ubuntu) to recognize that it is supposed to launch the mp3 player of choice.

The .music. part of the name is my convention to tell me I am dealing with a pointer (symbolic link) rather than an actual file.

I propose to use “Another_Name.link.txt” in the same way for dances with multiple names e.g., Chestnut is also called Dove's Figary. The command to do this was

      ln -s Chestnut.txt Doves_Figary.link.txt

Note that the ' has been omitted.

In Windows I believe “Shortcuts” will work, but this is still to be tried out. Similarly, I don't know how Macintosh OS-X deals with symbolic links.

Operating system considerations

Linux works with “Permissions” that control who may do what with files. I have found it important to set the permissions on text files of dance instructions to 644 mode to ensure double clicking text files will open a display of the file rather than offering a dialogue over whether the file is to be “executed”. I use 755 permissions for .mp3 files. I also set file ownership to the special user “dancing” whose password is “music”.

<todo!> More documentation of the setup </todo!>

filenameconventions.txt · Last modified: 2014/07/15 21:47 (external edit)