On Jan 16, 2008, at 8:16 PM, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org 
 > wrote:

quoted text
> On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, Kevin Ballard wrote:
>>
>> I'm speaking as a user, and as such, I shouldn't even have to know  
>> that it's
>> possible to write the same character in multiple different ways.
>
> The thing is, you seem to argue that what OS X does helps you as the  
> user.
>
> But you are arguing based on incorrect assumptions.
>
> First off, we've had years and years and years of usage of non- 
> corrupting
> filesystems (pretty much every UNIX OS around since day 1, and many  
> other
> OS's too), and it's simply not true that it's a problem. You see the
> filename in the file dialog, and you open it, and you're done. OS X  
> isn't
> any "easier" in this regard.
>
> In fact, this whole thread comes from the fact that the OS X choice  
> that
> you *think* is easier, is in fact not easier at all. It's not easier  
> for
> the user, it's not easier for the application programmer, and the  
> really
> sad part is that it's very much *not* easier for OS X itself either  
> (ie
> they had to literally write extra code with nasty tables to do it,  
> and it
> really does hurt them in performance and complexity).
>
> And _that_ is why the OS X situation is so sad. Apple literally added
> extra code to make things slower and more complex *and* harder to use
> reliably.
>
> Does it show up in normal behaviour? Of course not. You'd probably  
> never
> see it in real life outside of test-suites. People simply don't even  
> tend
> to use filenames outside of US-ASCII, and when they do use them, input
> methods really *do* tend to do the normalization for you.
>
> But when it comes to automation (which is what computers are all  
> about),
> the OS X choice is literally the wrong one. And there's no _upside_.  
> It's
> all downside. Which is why it's so stupid.
>
> I bet it only exists because OS X engineers didn't really even think  
> about
> it, and they just assumed that "normalization is helpful". They took  
> your
> stance - thinking it was worth it, without ever really thinking it
> through.
>
>            Linus
>

I believe it exists because HFS+ was created at a time when the Mac  
was moving from a multi-encoding world (which was a nightmare) to a  
Unicode world and they wanted to remove ambiguity in filenames. But I  
wasn't around when they made this decision so this is just a guess.

-Kevin Ballard
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