Otherware/Otherware_1_SB_Development.iso/mac/developm/source/suntar1.cpt/ideas for future expansions

Text File | 1992-06-20 | 3.5 KB | 69 lines

Ideas for future expansions:

Fully system 7 savvy, at least to allow "drag and drop" of files
Add new formats to "Open file╔": uuencode, files in three parts
    (the "old" .data, .rsrc, .info, or the other three-files format
    used by CAP (e.g. aufs)), maybe even StuffIt. And support for
    BinHex files broken into pieces
Write also to files, not only to disk
A better way to select files to be written, and maybe a "write automatic"
    which chooses the format (ASCII, data fork only or MacBinary) according
    to the type (TEXT or other) and size of res fork (0 or nonzero)
Support of tape units, some of them may be connected to both a Mac and
    a UNIX machine╔
Convert properly MS-DOS text files
A conversion table file extension => type and creator. To store it in
    a STR resource would yield a very easy implementation, but would
    not be useful since nobody would use it, a graphical interface is
    required !
A "continue elsewhere" could be useful in any situation, not only in
    the two dialogs which include such a button
PackIt files could be extracted on the fly during a MacBinary or BinHex
    extractions (that means three cascaded conversions, but in most cases
    those conversions simply copy the bytes)
View sector is less powerful than a true sector editor
Suntar lacks a "percent of work done" indicator
According to some technical notes, A/UX uses '/' rather than ':'
    in partial pathnames even when it's called through the Mac ToolBox
    calls. Since suntar uses a lot of partial pathnames, currently
    it does not run under A/UX. Obviously A/UX users may use the
    UNIX tar, but a) it lacks a graphical user interface and,
    b) it does not support three multivolume formats (for the same
    reasons, somebody could even want to port suntar to X-Window !)
Place all Italian strings in a STR# (and the values of Intl0Vers for
    versions in italian in another resource) so that the non-English
    language of suntar could be changed
A verify disk (which does not limit itself to reading, as Find headers)
Write the 'V' headers of GNU, as an option
To be able to open a log file with a copy of everything was sent to
    the console
When suntar asks for another disk to be written, one might wish to
    examine several tar/bar disks before deciding which one to overwrite

Things which are not done very well:

The creation date of extracted folders should be restored
When extracting the "icon" invisible file, set the "has custom icon" bit
    of the parent folder
When saving an alias, use the partial path of the alias (currently, the
    path is lost)
The semimodal dialogs should look more like Apple's movable modals
Ask back the disk if it's not there when suntar truncates the archive because
    an error aborted writing the last file, or at least print the sector
    number which must be cleared if the user refuses to insert back
    that disk
The signature of the application should be registered
When the user inserts a disk in the working drive, have some way to
    recognize it (e.g. remember the bytes in the checksum field of
    sector 0), before asking whether it's the disk I was working on
For some operations suntar uses mac_fwrite, but it does not benefit from
    the disk buffering added in version 1.3
When it's possible, check next AIX disk by looking forward to the sector
    where next header should be. In some cases, it could even use a
    "Find headers" and start from the first good header (AIX tar has
    an option to do that)
According to Apple the positions of windows should be saved, and restored
    at next launch
Never open and never close a Working Directory, since they create a lot
    of problems