[tex-live] [Fwd: Re: Could LZMA compression be combined with SFX format ?]

Zdenek Wagner zdenek.wagner at gmail.com
Wed Oct 1 10:59:53 CEST 2008


2008/10/1 Philip TAYLOR <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk>:
>
> Well, I don't know how far the analogy holds,
> but using ZIP compression, WinZip can see inside
> an SFX file and decompress it (that is, one does
> not need to take advantage of the self-extraction
> code but can bypass it and unpack in the normal
> way).  If the same is true for 7-Zip, then
> one could use the self-extraction capabilities
> under Windows and bypass them on Unix.  More
> research needed ?
>
SFX facility for ZIP files comes from an old PKZIP. Although it was
not OpenSource, the description of the ZIP format was available. Thus
WinZip knows where the important headers are and can skip the SFX
code. I am not sure whether other implementations, e.g. InfoZip, can
cope with SFX files. The same holds for SFX's created by 7-zip. I do
not know whether their format is documented so that other programs
could skip the SFX code. It could be tested on a small sample file.

> ** Phil.
> --------
> Karl Berry wrote:
>>
>>    it safe to assume that the standard *X unpackers will
>>    still be able to see inside the archive, once converted
>>    to SFX form ?
>>
>> I doubt it.  I've never heard of sfx being used on Unix.
>> Sorry.
>
>
>



-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz


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