Re: renaming of misc. to MISC

Rich Burridge (richb@stard)
Mon, 25 Nov 1991 16:51:19 +1100

} the purpose of renaming misc. to MISC was two fold.
} ...

Thanks Rex.

I suspect I can remove a few entries from the TODO file now that the new
face directory lookup is working nicely.

Which of the following is still a problem with anyone in faces v1.6.1 ?

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* From Lindsay F. Marshall <Lindsay.Marshall%newcastle.ac.uk@munnari.oz>
The domain name munging (i..e a.b.c -> b.c -> c) doesnt
seem to work at all, and of course its the wrong way round
for the uk anyway.

* From John Mackin <john@syd.dit.csiro.au>
A comment on the domain lookup algorithm. According to the manual page:

$DIR/machine.dom.ain/uid/iconname
$DIR/dom.ain/uid/iconname
$DIR/ain/uid/iconname
$DIR/misc./uid/iconname
$DIR/machine.dom.ain/unknown/iconname
$DIR/dom.ain/unknown/iconname
$DIR/ain/unknown/iconname
$DIR/misc./unknown/iconname

This leads to a top-level directory with a _lot_ of subdirectories.
I think this is responsible for much of faces' CPU time; it's well
known that large directories are a UNIX performance no-no. What I
would like to see instead (or in addition, or as an option, perhaps
compile-time) is the following.

$DIR/ain/dom/uid/iconname
$DIR/ain/uid/iconname
$DIR/misc./uid/iconname
$DIR/ain/dom/machine/unknown/iconname
$DIR/ain/dom/unknown/iconname
$DIR/ain/unknown/iconname
$DIR/misc./unknown/iconname

The idea is that at each level, if the next component exists and is
a directory, you descend into it and look there.

* From John Buckle <johnb@cs.su.oz.au>
With faces v1.4, I've been having trouble in sorting out my faces
directory path. On the old version (v1.3) I used -f .faces, this meant
that my directory was searched last which also meant that my misc. face
was used. Using FACEPATH I haven't been able to do this, it either seems
to use one directory or the other, but not both.

FACEPATH=:.faces - uses /n/faces/misc. for things stored .faces

FACEPATH=.faces: - uses my misc. for things in /n/face

Further comment from John Mackin <john@syd.dit.csiro.au>
This effectively means that under 1.4, you cannot have your own
misc./unknown icons. The first directory in the FACEPATH to contain a
misc./unknown icon will be the last directory searched; any directories
after that will be silently ignored. An unfortunate sude-effect of the
make_iconname() routine.