Re: httpfs, tarfs --help

[James Morrison]

--- Adam Olsen <rhamph@d2dc.net> 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.

> --
> Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus
>

=====
James Morrison
   University of Waterloo
   Computer Science - Digital Hardware
   2A co-op
http://hurd.dyndns.org

Anyone refering this as 'Open Source' shall be eaten by a GNU

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