[OT] Lengths of filename extensions (was: Image format libraries, raytracers and stuff)

[Stewart Gordon]

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Stewart Gordon" <smjg_1998 at yahoo.com> wrote in message 
> news:e3csov$14a3$1 at digitaldaemon.com...
>> Hmm....
>>
>> And I see the other WaveFront format is .mod, which is what the Fortrash 
>> compilers I've used use for module information files.
> 
> I guess when you've got alphanum characters, you can't do much ;)  Of 
> course, there's no real restriction on file extension length, just more of 
> an unwritten agreement that they should be three (or maybe, _maybe_ four) 
> letters long.
<snip>

The three-character 'rule' is a legacy from MS-DOS/Win16 days.  .html 
seems to be by far the best-known extension that's longer.  This was 
back when Win3.1 was in common use, but I guess they got away with it 
considering that a lot of web servers are Unix-based.  And of course 
somebody invented .htm to cater for web developers using these older 
systems (not to mention HTML pages distributed on disks of some kind).

Do the latest versions of FP still default to .htm?  I suppose it fits 
in with M$'s outrageous efforts to turn the WWW from a standard medium 
to a proprietary one.  FTM, see

http://toastytech.com/evil/onlyie.html

Hang on ... I've just thought.  Maybe they've done one good deed: taking 
.htm as the extension for M$HTML, and letting HTML keep .html.  :-)

Another four-letter extension that comes to mind is .jpeg, yet .jpg is 
still much more common.

> Of course, Visual Studio just leaves this rule in the dust with its 
> *.vcproj and such..

So does D with its *.d.  It seems a lot of programming languages use 
one-letter extensions.  I can think of .b, .c, .f and .i OTTOMH....

And Apple Project Builder uses .pbproj.  Coincidence?

Stewart.

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