[HN Gopher] Readme.txt vs. README.txt (2015)
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Readme.txt vs. README.txt (2015)
Author : joshcsimmons
Score : 119 points
Date : 2024-04-11 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (softwareengineering.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (softwareengineering.stackexchange.com)
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I can see the first guy writing a README , so desperate because
| people would ask obvious questions ignoring a file called
| readme:)
| cnity wrote:
| This was my thought too, it's borne of frustration.
| ArcMex wrote:
| Plausible and gave me a good chuckle.
|
| Thanks.
| BlueUmarell wrote:
| Shortly after, same guy invented "RTFM"...
| CapsAdmin wrote:
| I kinda thought it was because it was easy to tab autocomplete.
| asveikau wrote:
| This trend happened before autocomplete was common. If you
| logged into a commercial unix machine in the 90s it would not
| have autocomplete out of the box.
|
| I assumed it was to sort at the top of 'ls' output, which is
| one of the answers on stack exchange.
| frumbleanglerop wrote:
| Autocomplete was very common in the 90s -- installing bash or
| tcsh was generally one of the very first things one did on a
| commercial UNIX that didn't ship with a decent shell.
| asveikau wrote:
| I'm having a hard time finding people writing about this,
| because so many people write about shells from a more
| recent perspective. According to this, tcsh introduced
| completion in 1983.
|
| https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/l-linux-shells/
|
| Early on it used esc instead of tab.
|
| I also found in the bash changelog from 1996 there are
| fixes to crashing bugs in file name completion.
|
| However, I stand by what I said. It was common for people
| not to know about filename completion. It was common to
| ship without it by default. Most clued in people installed
| bash on those systems. But not everybody.
| FabHK wrote:
| How is "README" easier to tab-autocomplete than "Readme"?
| arp242 wrote:
| Does anyone know how to get en_US.UTF-8 sorting with diaeresis
| and stuff while still keeping capitalized stuff up front? I use
| LC_COLLATE=C to get this, but then diaeresis don't sort
| correctly.
|
| I tried to hack my way around fixing this a few years ago, but
| after many hours gave up.
| mrb wrote:
| To do that you would have to define a custom locale in
| /usr/share/i18n/locales and define a custom LC_COLLATE section.
| See https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/locale.5.html You can
| read /usr/share/i18n/locales/iso14651_t1_common as a (very)
| complex example.
|
| But, full disclosure: I have never done it myself.
| arp242 wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I tried, but was never able to get that to
| work. I don't know, it's been years and I had kind of given
| up on it.
| cpburns2009 wrote:
| It's a coincidence I just looked at that Q&A a couple nights ago.
| I had never heard of the "HACKING" file before but I like it. Is
| there a list somewhere of commonly used README-esque files used
| in open source projects?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I dunno about a list, but contributing, code-of-conduct, and
| license are all pretty common.
| hollerith wrote:
| INSTALL and LICENSE are the important ones. Maybe also BUGS
| (i.e., how to report bugs) and CONTRIBUTORS.
| kps wrote:
| And NEWS or CHANGES or similar.
| k4rli wrote:
| Always lovely to see a CHANGELOG.md
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| Even more lovely to see a ARCHITECTURE.md
| unwind wrote:
| In the linked answer? It had most of GNU's coding standard
| quoted.
| cpburns2009 wrote:
| The GNU coding standards only lists three: README, INSTALL,
| and COPYING.
| paulddraper wrote:
| CONTRIBUTING
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Weren't all file names all caps at one point?
| pvg wrote:
| Yes. And even with lowercase, when all you have is ASCII, all
| caps becomes a reliable/x-platform way to add emphasis. The
| question is a fun watercooler topic but the accepted answer is
| among the various reasons the convention arose - it probably
| doesn't have a simple answer that's The Answer.
| Lendal wrote:
| Yes but that's not the reason. Back in the 90's shareware scene
| long before Github, an overwhelming number of files would be
| downloaded to your computer and then you'd be left to wonder
| where to start. Making a file all caps draws your attention to
| it and lets you know where the author intends you to start.
| Today, Github opens that file for you on the front page of
| every repo, so it doesn't matter so much anymore.
| hollerith wrote:
| Initially in the 1980s it was to distinguish it visually from the
| other entries in the directory to make it more likely it is the
| first file a newbie will read.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Uppercase also comes first in ASCII, so a naive sort will show
| README before rEADME
| mannyv wrote:
| On *nix systems README was always the first file in the
| directory because everyone tended to use lower case for all
| their other filenames.
|
| I believe "Makefile" tended to be capitalized too, since you
| generally wanted to look in there to see how to build the
| thing.
|
| I don't think anyone wrote that down, it's just how things
| worked out. If anything it probably was inspired by Alice in
| Wonderland (Eat Me/Drink Me).
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| In an alternate timeline, we could have named them MAKEME
| instead of Makefile.
| timbit42 wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense. All filenames were uppercase in
| DOS so having README in uppercase wouldn't distinguish it
| visually.
| hollerith wrote:
| I claim the README convention came from Unix.
| kps wrote:
| This particular question is not about the origin of README
| files (the earliest _documented_ is from 1974 on TOPS-10) but
| about why README remains upper case on mixed-case systems
| (e.g. Unix). Neither has anything to do with MS-DOS.
| ASCIIbetical order is a good answer (certainly the reason _I_
| named things that way) although it doesn 't entirely explain
| README over ReadMe.
| mgax wrote:
| This made me feel very old. Too me it's 100% logical and not a
| mystery - while I fully understand that it's super-weird for
| people born after 1990
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Ha, agreed. I was training a new help desk employee a couple
| years ago (22 years old) and dated the shit out of myself
| explaining why I don't like spaces or special characters in
| file names and directories and why we want to try to keep them
| as short as possible.
| bitwize wrote:
| Back in the day that would mark you as a DOS pleb rather than
| a member of the glorious Macintosh master race.
| paulddraper wrote:
| dark days
| FabHK wrote:
| Sorry, 100% expected, sure, 100% normal, fine, 100%
| unremarkable, ok, but 100% logical?
| yigitkonur35 wrote:
| Randomly Explains Ambiguous Development Methodologies Endlessly
| what-the-grump wrote:
| Because really it should have been ReAdMeGoDDaMMiT so people rtfm
| :)
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| And LICENSE has no file type!
| acheron wrote:
| I remember the MS-DOS variations.. README.DOC (before .DOC
| applied only to MS Word files), README.TXT, READ.ME, README.1ST,
| README.NOW...
| jimhefferon wrote:
| 1ST_README also
| bdcravens wrote:
| that filename wouldn't work in MSDOS - it breaks the 8.3
| limit
| TachyonicBytes wrote:
| Isn't the urban legend around this that it mimics the "EAT ME"
| and "DRINK ME" messages from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis
| Carroll?
|
| The missing space is probably from UNIX preferences.
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| I didn't know but this is going to be my canon now
| ogurechny wrote:
| DOS era software sometimes had it in the form of "READ.ME".
|
| Note the assumption that any real user is able to read text
| files after classifying them as such no matter what their
| "extension" is. Also seen in countless "ORDER.FRM",
| "EXAMPLE.001", "EXAMPLE.002", and so on, not to mention all the
| ".DOC" files which had nothing to do with Microsoft Word.
| ysofunny wrote:
| back then 8+3 was a limitation on filenames.
|
| 8 for the "name" and 3 for the extension. ah, the lagacy of
| bit-counting when hardware was THE limitation on software
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| README has 6 letters though, so README or README.TXT would
| have been perfectly OK.
|
| READ.ME just looks cool, same thing as with internet
| domains.
|
| Edit: I even remember seeing this somewhere as a child and
| admiring how clever it was (Commander Keen maybe?).
|
| And the capitalization thing in this case is of course also
| a DOS thing (as opposed to the newer traditions pointed out
| by another comment.
|
| Tangent: on DOS and Windows, filenames without a file
| extension suffix were just weird. I mostly expected them to
| contain binary data :D
| ogurechny wrote:
| Out of necessity, ad-hoc metadata formats appeared quite
| soon.
|
| Say, you're connecting to BBS with A LOT of files. Unless
| you already know that "SEX459W.ZIP" and "SEX454.ZIP" are
| Windows and DOS versions of (fictitious) "Super Extractor
| 4.5", you'll spend a lot of time figuring it out. People
| who pay no attention to file categories can also get
| intrigued without a cause. Therefore, full names and
| descriptions were stored in sidecar files, and were
| processed to form complete file listings (to download and
| study offline). Sometimes operators personally reviewed the
| software, adding interesting opinions about users who had
| it on their computers, sometimes those were simple excerpts
| from release notes.
|
| In some cases, the metadata was automatically appended to
| archives (as standard comments). Later, in the era of Rich
| Formats, WinZip even allowed arbitrary HTML in ZIP
| comments, and automatically loaded them into IE frame
| instead of regular text box when opening such archive.
| Obviously, that novelty didn't last long.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Now we have almost the opposite in a lot of situations -
| software feels like it's holding hardware that's faster
| than ever back. See the comparison of Windows 2000 vs.
| Windows 11
| jansenmac wrote:
| Yes that's right. There used to be quite a cult around Alice in
| Wonderland amongst Computer Scientists. Caroll (or Dodgson as
| his real name was) was also a mathematician.
| neogodless wrote:
| Found this web site which _feels_ old, and describes this
| legend.
|
| http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/R/README-file.html
|
| In fact, the revision history last shows an update in 2003.
|
| http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/revision-history.html
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Found this web site which feels old, and describes this
| legend.
|
| The web site is old, but its merely the current incarnation
| of something much older: "The Jargon File (hereafter referred
| to as 'jargon-1' or 'the File') was begun by Raphael Finkel
| at Stanford in 1975."
|
| http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/revision-history.html
| demondemidi wrote:
| I worked for a French company in the 90s and the 8.3 dos name was
| LISEZMOI.1ER
| KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 wrote:
| all caps is (was?) typically considered SHOUTING so README gets
| your attention
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| README files is the first thing I read in any source code
| repository. I'm noticing a trend of less useful readmes in
| projects. Often they are bare or provide outdated and incorrect
| information. This makes the introduction to the source code
| harder, and increases the barrier for new contributors.
| logro wrote:
| Absolutely. Over the years countless projects have missed
| contributions from me because of a bad README.
| gilbetron wrote:
| It was an act of desperation. People wouldn't read docs or sanely
| named information, so people would jokingly title something
| "readme" or "important" or "mefirst". It was kind of seen as
| pathetic originally, to have to be so bad at your job you needed
| to include a README file. Those were much more arrogant times. I
| still remember seeing repos that actually said it was a good idea
| to have a README file in them and being bemused.
|
| Now I love them, but I've grown to love simple, "dumb" solutions.
| throw7 wrote:
| LC_COLLATE=C is still something I set on my linux installs.
| mrb wrote:
| My favorite configuration is just LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 and
| unsetting all other LC_* variables and unsetting LANG as well.
| That way you have full UTF-8 support, except ls(1) will sort
| the files as I want with uppercase coming before lowercase.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| Agreed, for several reasons. Fun fact - any regex using the
| common idiom [a-z] will break on certain locales when certain
| characters like "y" are present.
| turtlebits wrote:
| README.TXT or README.1ST have been used for a long time
| distributing software, I'm assuming it's just to follow that
| trend. FILE_ID.DIZ files were all caps as well.
| strict9 wrote:
| I remember this for other informational text files going back to
| the 90s. The caps made it stand out in the list of files so it
| was easier to find first.
|
| Another example is FILE_ID.DIZ. Just learned the extension is for
| _description in zipfile_.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FILE_ID.DIZ
| tacone wrote:
| They also make it often come first when the filenames are
| sorted since caps letters come first in the ascii table.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Huh, I always assumed it was because upper case characters come
| before lower case ones, but in the temporal sense. Just a
| holdover from the days before lower case was an option, like
| FORTRAN was for a while.
|
| The sorting trick is neat, though.
| partdavid wrote:
| The degree to which this is so pervasive and standard--so much so
| that Github renders your README by default--is kind of an
| artifact of the open source movement. Which also brought a lot of
| similar standardized files, as the need came up (LICENSE,
| COPYING, INSTALL, CONTRIBUTING, etc.).
|
| During the sharing, hacking, free software period it was a lot
| less standard and I saw plenty of alternate casing for README and
| "non-standard" spellings like 00README, Readme_first, etc. When
| everyone started sharing their open source projects in a standard
| way (Github and its ilk, along with the rise of CTAN/CPAN-like
| registries for all kind software) the notion of the standard
| README got a lot more... standard.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| I still habitually use README.txt and/or README.md even though
| none of my environments require the upper case.
|
| README.TXT vs README.MD:
|
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8655937/what-is-the-diff...
| wvh wrote:
| This one seems pretty obvious to those of us around computers and
| BBS and FTP in the nineties. On a side note, I made the pinky-
| thumb phone gesture to my 10 year old daughter a few days ago,
| and she didn't have a clue... Nor does she understand how my
| music collection plays without the internet. She just assumes my
| hacker skills have reached such level of Zen nirvana actual
| internet access is just a trifling detail and not a requirement.
| hammock wrote:
| I actually didn't see the answer I was looking for in there:
| command line/file system environments used to be all caps and
| there WERE NO lowercase letters for a long time. I remember
| when MS-DOS (whatever version) first began using/allowed
| lowercase filenames and it was like stepping into the future
| jez wrote:
| "Historically it wasn't possible to make lowercase `readme`
| files" doesn't explain why, after transitioning to systems
| which allowed separate case in file names, `README` files
| remained uppercase while most other text files now have
| lowercase names.
| hammock wrote:
| README is the only file that was both included with
| everything then, and is still now
| billfor wrote:
| I also use 0README.txt so it show up first when sorting by name.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| People forget the simtel20 archives, with its 00_INDEX.TXT and
| AAAREADME.TXT
| FabHK wrote:
| Incidentally, the answer "So it appears first when sorted by
| ASCII (where capital letters appear before small letters)" is
| insufficient - not only would "Readme" be sorted pretty close to
| "README", but LICENSE, COPYING, INSTALL, BUGS, CONTRIBUTING,
| AUTHORS, NEWS would all end up even before it.
| pif wrote:
| One example of a situation when the answer "It is the way it is
| because this is the way it is" is correct.
| b0afc375b5 wrote:
| I use README.org (emacs). Sadly, npmjs.com doesn't consider it as
| a readme file.
| sillywalk wrote:
| As an aside, Neal Stephenson wrote a book called REAMDE
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