Re: [lmi] Compression of MST files

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:50:12 +0000 Greg Chicares <address@hidden> wrote:

GC> Vadim--The MST files (unlike their XSLT cousins) are readable
GC> enough that an end user might be tempted to modify them in an
GC> inappropriate way, if we distribute them in source form. If we
GC> were to compress each MST file with xz and distribute only the
GC> compressed copies, how easy would it be to use liblzma (which
GC> we already distribute) inside lmi to decompress them on the
GC> fly (into RAM, not onto disk)?

 It shouldn't be very difficult, liblzma is supposed to have a simple to
use API (which I've never used, but it's described as being similar to
zlib), but it will require writing some code and depending on another third
party library and xz tool in the makefiles.

 We could use a compressed tarball instead (which is presumably better than
ZIP as slightly more difficult to modify for MSW users) and then use
wxArchiveInputStream to extract it into memory to do it in a simpler way at
the price of worse compression that we probably don't really worry about.

 But I'd also like to note that IMO XSLT files were not that difficult to
modify, especially if it's just to change some text, and if nobody has ever
done it during all the years they were used, it might be a bit premature to
worry about people modifying MST files. Maybe we could just checksum them
and give a warning/error if the actual files don't match?

 Regards,
VZ