Message-Id: <199611140446.RAA03058@papaioea.manawatu.gen.nz>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <malcolm AT mail DOT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz>
From: "Malcolm Taylor" <malcolm AT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz>
Organization: Grafik Software
To: Mark Habersack <grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl>, grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 17:45:07 +1200
Subject: Re: Smaller distribution archives
Reply-to: malcolm AT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz
CC: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

> Malcolm Taylor wrote:
> > > BTW... Does anyone know if this will have an self extracting option(for
> >
> > It will, eventually. The low memory use of the algorithm (ie less
> > than 2.5Mb for extraction) means that a PMODE stubed self extractor
> > will be usable even on a 4Mb machine, and I've not heard of any
> > people having a 386+ with less than 4Mb. The only problem with PMODE
> > is that I have had it not work on one OS/2 machine (never figured out
> > why) but work fine on another. There will also eventually be SFX for
> > Win32 and OS/2 at the very least.
> Have you thought about adding a script capability to the SFX? Or at
> least the ability to run something at the end of the extraction? BTW.
> I'm thinking about writing an SFX module for the old, good ZIP format
> with those just mentioned features. Do you guys think it might be needed
> by anyone?

Thought of this a while ago, a script with at least query boxes (so 
you can ask for directories) a few variables to set up directories 
etc. This could be stuck somewhere in the archive near the beginning 
(in fact at the beginning) and accessed by the SFX code.

As for the usefulness, several versions of these are already used for 
instalation archives (eg WinZip's self installer I have seen used, as 
well as WinRAR's). These would be great for packages distributed on 
the Internet and would get rid of the temp dir headaches.

Malcolm