[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: using dmg files (fwd)
From: |
M. Uli Kusterer |
Subject: |
Re: using dmg files (fwd) |
Date: |
Sun, 26 Sep 2004 14:59:46 +0200 |
User-agent: |
MT-NewsWatcher/3.4 (PPC Mac OS X) |
In article <mailman.4064.1096143491.1998.discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>,
Michael Baehr <mbaehr@gmail.com> wrote:
> You might want to take a look at Zipper.app. It's a nice Renaissance
> frontend to exploring and extracting several forms of archives,
> including the venerable gzipped tarball.
Yeah, Zipper.app sounds like a good tool. I wasn't necessarily talking
about "exploring" the files (though WinZip-like viewing of an archive as
just another folder definitely is a neat feature). I was talking more
about something like how Finder 10.3 treats zip files:
It has a default application that can zip/unzip files. Double-click a
zip file and it will bring up a progress panel, unzip the file into a
folder and that's it. Similarly, you can select a few files and then
right-click and select "generate archive" to create a zip archive from
them.
If you allow archive browsing, that's great, but I think it should be
made part of the standard distribution, and there should be a standard
format for distributing applications for GNUstep.
> I still think disk images, for various reasons, are the best way to
> package software for OS X. They provide a way to create a completely
> self-contained packaging environment, and you can see how this has
> been used by many software distributors by creating custom
> backgrounds, instructions in graphics, etc.
Yeah, the thing with the graphics is kinda nifty. Though I'm not sure
it'd work too well with GNUstep's variable system fonts etc.
But it wouldn't be too hard to allow for a special file that contains
view settings and a pathname to a desktop image in a .tar.gz file, and
having the unpacking program look for such files and automatically turn
them into whatever GWorkspace uses to keep track of that info. It's
nothing that's unique to disk images.
Disk images have a usability problem at their base: I've seen many
users who were confused about that "weird new hard disk" showing up on
their desktop. It's easier to tell people "This is a file that contains
a compressed version of a folder, double-click to unpack the folder",
than it is to explain to them that this is a packed version of a floppy
disk that is virtually mounted on their desktop.
> However, there's
> absolutely nothing wrong with just distributing a file as a .pkg
> installer, and as far as I know, the formats involved are pretty open;
Yes, but a .pkg really only makes sense for applications and other
executables, i.e. things that have a fixed location in the system's
directory structure. Adding general support for .tar.gz or .zip or
whatever would also allow users of GNUstep to easily distribute packed
documents. It'd be easy to add Zipper.app to the general GNUstep
distribution and make it the default for archives, and to add support to
it for exporting view settings in the archive to GWorkspace, than it
would be to drill open .dmg.
I'm not even sure that'd be in your interest. In the past it was always
pretty nice that you could tell what platform a file was for simply by
looking at its archive's extension. .zip used to be Windows, .tar.gz or
.tgz used to be Linux/Unix, and .sit or .dmg was MacOS.
But if you just want to support unpacking .dmg files for better
exchange with MacOS X, that's fine. I just don't think it's worth the
hassle making this your official file format. Especially since many
people these days use .zip instead.
Cheers,
-- Uli
http://www.zathras.de
- Fwd: using dmg files (fwd), Rogelio Serrano, 2004/09/24
- Re: Fwd: using dmg files (fwd), Alex Perez, 2004/09/24
- Re: Fwd: using dmg files (fwd), stefan, 2004/09/24
- Re: using dmg files (fwd), Richard Frith-Macdonald, 2004/09/24
- Re: using dmg files (fwd), Markus Hitter, 2004/09/24
- Message not available
- Re: using dmg files (fwd), M. Uli Kusterer, 2004/09/25
- Re: using dmg files (fwd), Michael Baehr, 2004/09/25
- Re: using dmg files (fwd), Markus Hitter, 2004/09/25
- Message not available
- Re: using dmg files (fwd), M. Uli Kusterer, 2004/09/26
- Message not available
- Re: using dmg files (fwd),
M. Uli Kusterer <=
Re: Fwd: using dmg files (fwd), Jeremy Tregunna, 2004/09/24