8.3 - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

This numeric code is in reference to filename length restrictions under the [MS-DOS] operating system (inherited from CP/M, inherited by early versions of Windows) allowing files to have at most eight characters in the main part of the filename and three characters in the extension or suffix. This is why so many '90s artpacks had the naming convention of an up-to-four-letter abbreviation of the group's name and four characters representing the month and year of release (eg. MIST1094.ZIP). Similarly, these limits informed artwork filename conventions of abbreviating the artist's handle with two characters, adding a dash, and leaving five more characters to describe the subject of the promotional artwork. Within a given crew, you wanted to avoid having too many members with handles that were too similar if only because if their nicknames reduced to the same three-letter prefix, you'd have a hard time knowing in advance which artist was responsible for which artwork without consulting its [SAUCE] metadata or, you know, looking at it. (In early Mist packs, Mavrik squatted MA-, so Mage was driven to use MZ-)

(Many artgroups in the early '90s, including eg. iCE and Dark, renamed files' three-letter suffix to celebrate their group affiliation -- that the files involved were actually ANSI art was simply implied by their presence in an artpack. But you couldn't get away with pulling that trick with a bitmap.)