NCSA Mosaic for MS Windows User Guide: Tips and Tricks


Many Web documents do not conform to the DOS 8.3 filename standard. 8.3 refers to a filename with up to eight alphanumeric characters optionally followed by a period and optionally by up to three more alphanumeric characters (e.g., NCSAHome.htm or 1page.txt)
If you save a file with a longer name to a disk on a Windows 3.1 system without assigning a name that conforms to the 8.3 convention, Windows 3.1 assigns a name using the following criteria:
- If more than eight characters appear before the first period in the original filename, only the first eight are used.
- If more than three characters appear after the last period, only the first three are used.
- If more than one period appears, only the last period is recognized.
- Case is changed to all lowercase. For example:
xc8 NCSAMosaicHomePage.html becomes ncsamosa.htm.
xc8 Mosaic.ps.Z becomes mosaic.z.
xc8 WinMosaicInstall.html becomes winmosai.htm.
Filenames that are truncated to meet the 8.3 standard frequently become unclear. Assigning more informative filenames helps. For example, you could rename the file in the third example above install.htm to clarify its purpose.

