On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 10:22:41AM -0800, James Morrison wrote:
> --- Adam Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > There's two ways for an app to support gzipped files:
> > a) within the app itself, by recognising files with a .gz extension
> 
>         This is bad, extensions should not be trusted.  Magic can
> be used to determine if a file is compressed, and if so what library
> function
> to call to decompress it.  There probably should be a hurd library to
> do this
> stuff so at some point we would be able to run both gzipped binaries
> and bzip2'd
> binaries.
> 
> > b) using a translator
> >
> > You can't use the translator *all* the time, because you may want
> > to
> > manipulate the gzipped file itself.  And doing it in the app has to
> > be
> > duplicated for every app.  Therefore there IS no "right way".  Do
> > whatever is most convenient.
> >
> > >
> > I agree.  Btw, naming a non-gzipped file .gz breaks opening them
> > with
> > vim, and presumably every other app that already supports gzipped
> > files.  Being compatable is very important.
> 
>   Humm, it seems vim is broken.

It'd seem so.  gv otoh works perfectly.  I think quakeforge would be
broken too (but it's *not* completely transparently handling of
gzipped files - it'll send them over the network compressed).  I can't
think of any other apps at the moment.

-- 
Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus

_______________________________________________
Bug-hurd mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-hurd

Reply via email to