Nicholas Bodley wrote:

>Those who know the internal workings of MSDOS, truly well, point out that
>an ordinary [/] can function internally as a directory delimiter, but that
>some crucial function that's frequently used (I forget which) rejects a
>[/], thus, in practice, it requires a [\] to be used routinely.
>
>

I never heard that - I always assumed it was either a derivative of the
earlier OS's from which MS-DOS evolved, such as CPM, or it was
deliberately stuck in their by Bil Gates himself as a differentiating
factor from Unix (which he was surely aware of at the time MS was less
then 5 people).

It also could be that, given the limited amount of memory available at
the time, less overloading of characters made for simpler command line
parsers, and "\" was not really being used for anything else.

>I tried to find the story of the invention of the [\], by Bob Bemer,
>

Hmm, never heard of him before but perhaps I should have:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Bemer

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash. the explanation there
is unsatisfying to me though. I would like to see more on the link
between the "no directories supported" and "directories supported"
evolution. Did CPM or others have directories by then? How about DR-DOS?
Doesn't sound quite right to me...

Note also the last paragraph.

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Backslash for some more
information that others think doesn't sound quite right.

>(Relative trivia: How do people read "www" aloud, a) in English, and b) in
>other languages? I once heard a Public TV financial consultant call it
>"triple-dub".
>
>

I have heard the "triple dub" too, but only form the "I don't really
care how geeky you think I am crowd" or from the "too hip for thou"
crowd, and only then occasionally. Usually
"double-you-double-you-double-you", more more recently dropping it
completely when the context is clear that a url is being expressed.

Which means it is often confusing to explain a web site that has a
different host name. And it means that system operators are like to to
have to define these aliases: domain.com -> www.domain.com and
www.something.domain.com -> something.domain.com.

Usability lists I am on have discussed this topic in the past endlessly
and without great consensus. So usually it falls to the system operator
to cover all the bases. Which I guess is what MS tries to do in IE as
you noted - they are forgiving of errors, which follows the general
philosophy of not sticking strictly to standards that everyone else
agrees to.

Best,

Barry