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[Targnum-editing] Re: ZIP & other animals
From: |
the duke |
Subject: |
[Targnum-editing] Re: ZIP & other animals |
Date: |
Wed, 09 Jul 2003 21:02:18 -0700 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312 |
ZMan ZMan wrote:
the duke wrote:
ZMan ZMan wrote:
the duke wrote:
ZMan ZMan wrote:
the duke wrote:
...
1) use tar.gz format, not Zip, as it is proprietary and
deprecated by GNU.
for tar.zg you can do it using cygwin, or any DOS port of gtar
you can find.
nope.
i'm not gonna use cygwin even though i have it installed. (i won't
even install WinACE or ala, even though it have .tgz support out
of the box)
i'm gonna use Zip as long as i'm on windos as i know that free (as
both in freedom, and in free beer) implementations of it for free
OSes do exist.
well, gnu deprecate the usage of prop. OSes at all, may they tell
you to reject some of my translations because of this ?
you know that _Winzip_ is a _shareware_, it is not free. you don't
seem to know that Lempel-Ziv is copyrighted. And you also don't
seem to know that some GNU/Linux distributions might not include a
zip utility. only a gzip utility. we don't use it to make Stallman
happy, we use it to make the package accessible for as much people
as possible. we prefer not using Zip like we prefer not using MS
Doc format. I won't throw away translations that someone will send
me in DOC format, but I will be forced to copy them to HTML without
the DOC formatting, and reformat the whole document. That's a lot
of work just like opening every ZIP you send and resend it as
TAR.GZ, so that everyone can enjoy it.
It's about sharing, not about being a zealot.
i don't like using prop. software.
but i feel no shame making a temporal use of the like which have
free & compatible counterparts, like zip
<http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/tools/zip/info-zip/Zip.html>/unzip
<http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/tools/zip/info-zip/UnZip.html>.
(anyway on windos i only use WinRAR, but as RAR isn't free and has
no open-source compressor (though it do have an open-source
decompressor <http://www.rarlab.com/rar_add.htm>), i don't use RAR
when i want full compatibility with others, but ZIP)
i know not much about the LZ (c)opyright, but the fact is that there
are free implementations of zip, maybe like lame for mp3... and as
i'm not an advocate i don't have a clue about it's legality.
when i'm on linux, which is where i prefer to be, i use only or
almost only free software (my ads-blocking software isn't free
(...yet searching a free alternate for some time now), and so is my
56K modem driver (but as i'm on adsl since 04/2001, i don't install
it, as i don't use it)).
i won't be caught sending a file in a prop. format, like M$ DOC
(when it's worth reading of course... i'm not talking here about
jokes ! ;)) - for any reason. because when i give something, i wish
that it'd be useful to the recipient ! (whatever the conditions are
at the one's side...)
which free implementations of ZIP do you know? (I'm talking of GPL or
BSD style here, not shareware or freeware)
I'd like to take a peek at their licenses. if I'm wrong, I'm willing
to admit it, but I don't think I'm wrong...
anyway, this is what I found on some site dealing with zip
copyrights. as far as I remember from GNU documents, that's really
the case:
"Unisys claims a patent on LZW encoding and on LZW decoding _in an
apparatus that performs LZW encoding_, but the patent appears to
exempt a stand- alone decoder (as in UnZip's unshrink.c). Unisys has
publicly claimed otherwise, but the issue has never been tested in
court."
i believe that you're talking about the Expired-Already Unisys' LZW
(aka " The GIF' ") patent... peep at here
http://www.whatsup.co.il/article.php?sid=1510 where you may find more
info about it.
i'll eat my hat if i'm wrong ;-}
greeintgs !
it's an unclear issue which might raise future problems. why
insisting on the dangerous road when you have the safe and portable
tar.gz around?
Good point, it really was my mistake.
ZIP _and_ GZIP are based on Lempel-Ziv, but not on Welch, thus, on LZ
and not LZW.
And the Lempel-Ziv had no patent on it (generally. some versions have).
so you can throw away my whole claim about copyrights. I take it back.
That made me look for some "zip vs. tar.gzip" arcticles.
This one seems to have a good point:
http://www.sct.gu.edu.au/~anthony/info/misc/tgz_vs_zip
So now there is actually no special reason not to use ZIP, except the
fact that tar.gz is technically better.
And there's also the issue of a single standard format for TarGNUm,
which is currently tar.gz. The advantage of ZIP - the ability to add and
remove files witout decompressing - seems almost irrelevant for us, and
surely inferior to the better compression of tar.gz.
so it seems that we remain with the tar.gz as a standard, but for a
totally other reasons.
anyone disagree?
comments and objections are welcome
thanx for pointing out my mistake
the duke