For Fireworkz 2 CD person at Wakefield show

There was a chap at the Wakefield show who seemed quite frustrated over the case of the filenames on the non-zipped portion of the Fireworkz Pro 2 CD. Unfortunately I didn’t get his name, and he hasn’t followed up via email.

I’ve uploaded a copy of the original “case-correct” CD contents to the web for download for him, so if he’s reading this, could he please contact me on the usual R-Comp email address.

He queried the contents of the recommended “zipped” version on the CD – I can confirm that both versions report the same based on my master copy. I suspect any differences relate to the fact that the “run-from-CD” version (ie. not zipped) is pre-registered whereas the zipped version allows you to enter your own registration details on first run.

Sorry to trouble everyone, but I couldn’t think how else to contact the person.

Sorry to trouble everyone, but I couldn’t think how else to contact the person.

Given how the ROOL website is so central to RISC OS, I really don’t see the problem. In fact, I applaud you for going out of your way to get in touch with him.

who seemed quite frustrated over the case of the filenames

And if you’re here, whoever you are, is it really that big a deal if filenames are in upper case (which is, I presume, the problem)?

Indeed – and if those files are to end up copied from the CD onto the drive of a RISC OS computer, there are tools that can change the case etc.

IT ALL DEPENDS, SOME PEOPLE FIND IT VERY IRRITATING ;-)

So long as it works, I could care less ¹ about the case of the filenames. If it really irks me, I’d rename the app (the only bit I usually see) and leave the rest of the files.
I remember using CD-ROMs on an IDE card on an A5000, and the number of magic incantations required to get it to see the disc, never mind run anything from it…

¹ I used that expression on my blog, and Vince replied by pointing me to this delightful little video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw ;-)

Edit: For extra comedy gold, read the comments. Especially this one and its replies.

Agreed – my policy with CDs is to provide a “run from CD” version, which will probably end up in upper case, and a zipped version (plus decompression tools) for neatness on your hard drive.

I think his point was that if I’d done Joliet extensions, it’d look nicer on the CD, which is true. However, I always worry about filetypes and/or older RISC OS compatibility with the extended formats, and tend to prefer “tried and tested” CDFS for RISC OS CDs. That said, it was easy enough to upload the CD version to the web, so hopefully it’ll end well :)

Anyone know where RISC OS 5 lies now in terms of extended CD format handling?

Anyone know where RISC OS 5 lies now in terms of extended CD format handling?

It cannot handle UDF format but happily accepts CDs created by PowerISO under Windows, which renders upper and lower case correctly. Joliet has been around on RISC OS for some time now so support must be pretty good. CDs created by CDVDBurn using Joliet appear to read OK on RISC OS 5 and RISC OS 4.39 (VRPC). On my Risc PC (RISC OS 4.02) CDs made by CDVDBurn (using Joliet) appear all in capitals and with long filenames truncated so providing a zip archive as well would work on everything.

I don’t think RISC OS 5 CDFS has Joliet capabilities (and it is really sad that I am not absolutely sure of this!), but ISTR that it was patched to refrain from forcibly uppercasing all filenames but just taking them “as is” from the ISO9660 directory structure – there was a CDFS patch around for older versions of RISC OS, too. You need to choose the correct ISO naming convention in CDVDBurn however to make this work.

I don’t think there is any tool on RISC OS that actually puts truncated filenames on a CD. CDVDBurn only warns you about filenames that may be too long for ISO Level 1 or 2, but never automatically truncates.

Select CDFS understands Joliet, as does CDROMFS.

Later (currently unreleased) CDVDBurn versions come with the Disc Extractor Feature, which also supports Joliet as well as Rockridge extensions.

I don’t think RISC OS 5 CDFS has Joliet capabilities (and it is really sad that I am not absolutely sure of this!)

Sounds like you missed the release notes when you upgraded to RISC OS 5.22, Steffen

I knew I discussed a few CDFS related things with Sprow quite some time ago…shame on me. I should really pay more attention.

Time to update the CDVDBurn manual. And maybe produce a softloadable CDFS with Joliet capability for the pre-Select users?