Using uppercase in filenames

[Esther]

Hi all,

It’s been ingrained in my mind that using uppercase letters in file names is not good practice. I have a need to use uppercase letters in my file names and need your input on why this may be good/bad practice.

Thanks!

[Cinnamon]

Hi there
I'm not an expert. I don't think there's much of a problem with most output types. However Linux filenames are case sensitive, so you need to be careful you don't change the case after you've set up links.
I'm sure someone can give you more accurate information, but I think Linux is the main concern, anything else is just style preference.
I've heard similar issues about whether to use spaces in filenames, hyphens and so on.
I hope this helps.

Suze

[Andrew]

From what I understand, Suze is correct: case is only an issue for Linux/Unix. For Windows it doesn't matter.

[KevinDAmery]

Hi there
I'm not an expert. I don't think there's much of a problem with most output types. However Linux filenames are case sensitive, so you need to be careful you don't change the case after you've set up links.
I'm sure someone can give you more accurate information, but I think Linux is the main concern, anything else is just style preference.
I've heard similar issues about whether to use spaces in filenames, hyphens and so on.
I hope this helps.

Suze

There are two different issues here:

1) As mentioned, Unix based systems (including Linux) are case sensitive, so as far as they are concerned Topic.htm and topic.htm are two different files. Windows, otoh, is not case sensitive and would see those as the same file. The practice of always using lower case for file names came as a way of preventing broken links when a site / help system was hosted on a *nix based server.

You can use upper case if you need to, but if you do then you need to ensure that all of your hyperlinks follow the same case usage. Additionally, there is a setting in the WebHelp target for Flare that will force all characters to lower case when you build the output - obviously, in your case you will need to ensure that setting is disabled.

2) Spaces, hyphens, and other characters can be problematic based on how different systems interpret them. For example, some systems interpret spaces as the end of a file name, meaning that hyperlinks won't resolve properly. (Occasionally, you'll see addresses where the space has been replaced by %20 - this prevents the name from being terminated, but can lead to other usability problems such as not being able to cleanly copy the URL into a message or document.)

[KevinDAmery]

From what I understand, Suze is correct: case is only an issue for Linux/Unix. For Windows it doesn't matter.

True - just remember that what matters here is which OS the system that is hosting the help is running. For example, if you host your help on a web server, it doesn't matter if the customer is using a Windows system - what matters is if the web server is running Windows of Unix (since the server is the machine that is finding and delivering the content, it is the one that determines how mixed case gets interpreted).

[Andrew]

From what I understand, Suze is correct: case is only an issue for Linux/Unix. For Windows it doesn't matter.

True - just remember that what matters here is which OS the system that is hosting the help is running. For example, if you host your help on a web server, it doesn't matter if the customer is using a Windows system - what matters is if the web server is running Windows of Unix (since the server is the machine that is finding and delivering the content, it is the one that determines how mixed case gets interpreted).

Excellent point.

[Madcap Guru]

There are some older unix based webservers where case does matter, but for most websevers you are ok with mixing lower and upper case