FWD: Re: Jforum: J 4.05a release for Unix

["rashworth" <rashworth@mail.warpnet.net>]

FYI from Bob Ashworth

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: ml-jforum@gaertner.de (GDS MarshLabs)
Reply-To: forum@jsoftware.com
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 00:48:59 GMT

Joey K Tuttle:
JKT>	
JKT>	One which I don't understand is that I couldn't seem to 
JKT>	uncompress the *.tgz files in my SuSE Linux system. My
JKT>	solution was to use Stuffit in my Macintosh to build the
JKT>	directories, then use it again to zip all of them, move
JKT>	that to Linux and unzip it - that seemed to work fine.

I think I understand, though.  My theory consistent with the above and
the missing permissions follows below, after some clarifications.  There
is obviously some confusion around the letters "zip" going on here.  I
believe you fell prey to misleading instructions. 


The suffix ".tgz" is an ugly (but quite well known) contraption of the
cascade ".tar.gz".  "jhelp.tar.gz" is a tar(1) archive ("jhelp.tar")
which was then compressed using the GNU gzip(1) program, which uses the
suffix ".gz" (as opposed to the traditional Uniz compress(1) program
which uses ".z").  The double suffix is fine and clear on any Unix
system.  However, some people cannot download the kits directly to their
Unix system but have to travel with it through some file system which
cannot cope with such a double extension, but prefer a maximum of a
single, three-letter extension, trashing anything more complicated. 
Thus ".tgz", not ".tar.gz". 

The GNU gzip compressor has nothing (well, little) to do with "ZIP-INFO"
format files.  These are the ".zip" files as known in the DOS/Windows
world and which are created, for example, by the "WinZip" and "pkzip"
programs.  There is a tool in the Unix world to extract such archives.
Its name is "unzip".  "Unzip" has nothing to do with gzipped tar-files,
however.

It is therefore misleading that the download instructions at the
JSowftware site tell people to "unzip and extract each .tgz file". 

Using "unzip" simply wouldn't work.  Which again might make people looking
for another program which deals, like "unzip", with zip-files, such as
StuffIt on the Mac, or WinZip on Windows.  Which both can actually both
extract the ".tgz" archive (extra feature) and create an ".zip" file;
losing the unix file mode bits, though, because the ".zip" format
cannot express those.  Of course "unzip" can then deal with that.

Was this what happened, Joey?

Eric:

I recommend to exchange that misleading sentence in the download
instructions with the specific commands to be used (those which you had
to quote in an earlier followup to the original problem report. 

							Martin Neitzel

Obligatory plea: The untrimmed _full_ quotes at the _end_ of a message
are a real nuisance for me.  At least for me who did not grow up with
the benefit of any what's-its-name-quiz training.  I prefer _trimmed_
quotes before the response.  Also, I was educated not to skip stuff
but to pay attention.  No, I don't want to untrain this.  And in cases
where I *do* want to see the full original text, I usually still have
that message among the active ones, or within my 30 day news spool,
or in the list archive at JSoftware.

Isn't it funny to find them applied so excessively on a mailing list of
people who otherwise appreciate terseness so much ;-)

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