| From: | Victor I. Haaz |
| Date: | 7 Sep 2000 at 12:57:57 |
| Subject: | Re: [RE: AMIOPEN: AmiPak] |
From: Jim Peters <jim@aguazul.demon.co.uk>
>On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 10:16:04AM -0400, Gregory Roberts II wrote:
>> Well, I'm going to nit-pick a little bit and point out there are
>> situations that a "sane average user" might care what a compressed file
>> is, so it shouldn't be completely transparent.
>>
>> Depending on what I'm doing, I might want to put a whole bunch of files
>> together for storage or transmission, just to keep everything together.
>> If this case, I would care at least somewhat about dealing directly with
>> the compressed bundle.
>
>The most user-friendly way I know of handling compression from a user
>perspective is to simply give them a tool to compress directories in
>place, converting `my_folder/' into `my_folder.tgz' (or .amp or .zip
>or whatever). If they choose to unpack it again, then everything
>should be exactly as they left it - dates, links, everything.
One thing I didn't seen it mentioned here:
There is a tool on the classic OS, which mounts archives as a new device
("archive-filename:"), so all the system can access any files within trans-
parently. (It's sadly read-only, AIK).
So, I think it would be quite useful if the archives could be accessed also as
a *regular directory* (if it was just another directory-structure). (Of course,
the user should be able to handle the compressed file itself somehow.)
And maybe it would be needed to differenciate between one-file archives
and multi-file archives. Because the former can be hadled as the file
within itself, while the latter may need a pop-up file-requester, or the like,
upon use by user/app.
[Just I don't see how this all meets with the no-files-OS-theory.]
Regards,
Victor I. Haaz
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