Date: Thu, 27 Mar 97 17:48:58 MST
Message-Id: <9703280048.AA25501@rgfn.epcc.Edu>
From: bd733 AT rgfn DOT epcc DOT Edu (Jason M. Daniels)
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: [opendos] Wishlist v2.0
Reply-To: bd733 AT rgfn DOT epcc DOT Edu



>
>On 27 Mar 97 at 11:15, Mike A. Harris wrote:
>> On Sun, 23 Mar 1997, yeep wrote:
>
>> Yes, I must agree.  Due to the popularity of the WWW, and of the
>> GUI browsers that are out there, I recommend that all future
>> online documentation for OpenDOS (or anything else for that
>> matter) be distributed as HTML.  A normal browser could read it
>> then.  The only thing that really needs to be thought about is
>> how the compression/decompression of the HTML is going to work to
>> save space.  The browser will probably have to be modified to
>> accept a type something like:
>> 
>> Content-type: octet-stream/html-zip
>> 
>> Or something like that.  Then UNZIP is called transparently and
>> the page is viewed.
>> 
>> What does everyone else think? 
>
>Hmmm. Well, the problem with HTML is that an html "document" really lives
>in several files, due to all the graphics and stuff. Apart from that, it's
>a fine markup language; we will need a standard covering the exact means of
>compressing an entire HTML document into a .zip - the name of the 
>root html file in the .zip should be index.htm, filenames should be 8.3
>for legacy reasons (people won't be seeing the filenames used in the .zip
>anyway, so pretty LFNs aren't really necessary).

Keeping the files in the archive (which I personally think should be 
.tgz, not .zip, since more platforms support .tgz than .zip) in 8.3 is a 
good idea, but I think a "directory" file should be included with full 
LFNs, in case the user wants to browse the archive manually or 
selectively, or wants to maintain the files. (it's a lot easier to tell 
what a file is when it has a LFN :)

Jason

--
Jason Daniels -- bd733 AT rgfn DOT epcc DOT edu
http://www.trailerpark.com/phase2/fireside/index.htm
Paradox #218: "Saying 'I'm very modest' isn't."
Commodore 64 forever!