Issues with tinytex downloads

[Zdenek Wagner]

pá 3. 2. 2023 v 17:01 odesílatel John Collins <jcc8 at psu.edu> napsal:
>
> Actually, in my experience, the old API does handle long filenames.  The
> problems I have seen all arise when filenames contain non-ASCII characters that
> are outside the current system code page.  When that happens, the API reverts
> to using short filenames.  E.g., on my Windows 11 system with system code page
> 1252, that happens when Perl scripts deal with files whose names containing
> Cyrillic characters.
>
> I think it was this issue that Norbert was referring to as possibly being the
> cause of Eli's problem.
>
> John
>
No, the old API _MUST_NOT_ support the long names because the space in
memory for the file name (or an element of a directory path) is
exactly eleven bytes. If the old API were allowed to return a longer
name, it would overwrite other variables in the memory. This is the
reason why the OS creates alias names as I wrote in my previous mail.
The old API is intended for use in the DOS subsystem. It was the only
API up to Windows 3.11. The new API was introduced about 30 years ago
with the first release of Windows NT which was even before Windows 95.
OS/2 had a similar issue but they decided that files and directories
not complying with 8.3 convention would not be accessible by the old
API at all. Now I see no reason to use the old API in nowaday's
software so you should never see names with ~1 appended to the first 6
charactes. I can admit that this is not the only reason but it
definitely signals that a piece of an obsolete SW is being used. It
can be some kind of an obsolete shell or something like this.

Zdeněk Wagner
https://www.zdenek-wagner.eu/


> On 2/3/23 5:38 AM, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I am not a Windows expert but I see a potential problem not only with
> > the user name. Windows have two APIs for file access. All GUI apps use
> > the new one hwich has just a few limitations on file names. The old
> > API is retained for compatibility with the old DOS where file names
> > were limited to 8.3 US-ASCII (with forbidden character such as *, ?,
> > space etc). If a name did not fit to this rule, Windows created an
> > alias name from the first 6 characters followed by ~1, ~2, ~3 etc to
> > make it unique. I see names with ~1 even in other path elements which
> > could mean that you run the program in an evironment using the very
> > old API.
> >
> > Zdeněk Wagner
> > https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zdenek-wagner.eu%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cjcc8%40psu.edu%7C4f04ec2bffeb493bb94e08db05d2e3f2%7C7cf48d453ddb4389a9c1c115526eb52e%7C0%7C0%7C638110175554993003%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=0XbeI2%2F%2BGhSYcExdKA%2BMbFsXFXdlk2MT9E17qWB8NDQ%3D&reserved=0
> >
> > pá 3. 2. 2023 v 8:55 odesílatel Norbert Preining <norbert at preining.info> napsal:
> >>
> >> On Thu, 02 Feb 2023, Eli Holland wrote:
> >>> Drive/2022-2023/2023 Winter/educ260b/pset3/analysis/C:\Users\Lil'
> >>> Chunky\AppData\Roaming\TinyTeX\tlpkg\gpg/pubring.kbx': No such file or
> >>> directory
> >>
> >> What is your Windows user name?
> >>
> >> It seems it is not only normal characters ...
> >>
> >> Best
> >>
> >> Norbert
> >>
> >> --
> >> PREINING Norbert                              https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.preining.info%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cjcc8%40psu.edu%7C4f04ec2bffeb493bb94e08db05d2e3f2%7C7cf48d453ddb4389a9c1c115526eb52e%7C0%7C0%7C638110175554993003%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=1EVzWZUrdbx1AD7Xb%2F9%2Fx4FHxnzm9N8pEvjzaTn3NHc%3D&reserved=0
> >> Mercari Inc.     +     IFMGA Guide     +     TU Wien     +     TeX Live
> >> GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0 ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13
> >