This always reminds me of the Microsoft long filename support for Windows NT. They basically use the unused bits of the old DOS 8.3 file entry (8 characters for the filename, 3 characters for the extension) to signal a long file name. Then they allocate enough space to store the file name depending on its length. The genius part is, that older systems only see the shorter filenames and keep on working.
The specification of the format is at [1], although I would love to see a nice drawing of the hack.
Your URL is broken but it sure sounds like you're describing the FAT32 long filename hack which appeared in Windows 95. That has nothing to do with NTFS.
The specification of the format is at [1], although I would love to see a nice drawing of the hack.
[1]: http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?MSDOSFileSystem