Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Sez, self-extracting zoo system 2.30
Summary: size versus functionality compromises
Message-ID: <3806@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 30 Aug 88 04:55:52 GMT
References: <3796@bsu-cs.UUCP> <20948@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 58

In article <20948@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> mdf@tut.cis.osu-state.edu (Mark D.
Freeman) writes [about sez 2.30]:

>Can you use some command line parameter to just list what is in the
>self-extracting zoo archive?  

No, sez is too simple for that.  All that the self-extracting
archive does is extract itself.

>It seemed to want to
>extract everything to the current directory, even though the .zoo file
>that I fed zoo had full pathnames in it.

Sez is too simple for this too.  Everything is extracted into the
current directory.

Now let's examine why.

First:  Self-extracting archives should not be too big.  The overhead
is quite low now; you can have a bunch of self-extracting files on a
disk and they don't take up much more space than just having them as
zoo archives.

Second, consider why you would use a self-extracting archive:  for
simplicity.  Just tell the user "run this program'"

If more features were added, you would gain very little over just
distributing zoo archives with looz on the disk, and the self-
extraction code would be much larger.  You would have to give the user
instructions to use the self-extracting archive anyway, so you might as
well just say "run looz and it will tell you how to extract/list these
archives."

So, in a nutshell:  If you want the recipient to be able to list files,
provide a copy of looz and just use zoo archives.  If you also want to
unarchive to a directory subtree, provide zoo.

But the question is still open.  Would you, the user, rather have a
2492-byte overhead and just simple extraction, or would you rather have
say a 10000 byte overhead and possibly a help screen, and be able
to list contents and extract to a directory subtree?  And if you chose
the latter, what would you gain over simply distributing the zoo
archive and the zoo archiver program, with a batch file to be executed
by the user?  Post your response in this newsgroup, and if enough
people want a specific size/functionality trade-off that's what you wil
likely get in the (possibly distant) future.

Oh, by the way, you *can* list and extract (to a subdirectory) self-
extracting archives created by sez 2.30.  Use zoo 2.00 and add
"@2566,2637" to the command.  For example:

     zoo x.//@2566,2637 selfex.exe

will extract to subdirectories.  The numbers will vary with the version
of sez that was used, and Fiz will tell you which ones to use.  Nobody
who has zoo 2.0 running on any system (AmigaDOS, VAX/VMS, UNIX) need
find it impossible to extract a self-extracting archive.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi