[openbeos] Re: Expander's behaviour (was: unrar)

"Rob Tijssen" <rob.tijssen@xxxxxxx> wrote:
 ...
> I even think that zipping/unzipping should Be part of the Tracker

Instead of making Tracker itself archive-aware, there should be a 
zipfs, a tarfs, etc, that would let you mount an archive as a volume, 
letting all applications access the contents of the archive in a 
uniform way.

Ingo's userlandfs would be a good tool for prototyping. And a pure 
userland implementation should be able to cut a few corners and make 
use of the regular tar/zip/etc binaries, I think.

"Simple" approach:
Create zipfs, tarfs, etc. Create glue application called MountArchive. 
Set it as the Preferred Application of zip, tar, etc. This app would 
handle opening/mounting/showing in Tracker. (well, mounting primarily -
- It's so simple my glue app ZooKeeper could do it.)

Combined approach:
Each zipfs, tarfs module also has a main() and a BApplication and the 
Supported Types list lists the filetype supported by each fs. This way 
each module is selfcontained and no glue app is necessary.

Using the filetype database and the Preferred Application mechanism has 
the benefit that you can easily turn off the mount-volume feature on a 
per-filetype basis. It fits with the system. You can use the Open-with 
menu, for one-off situations, or you can choose to set, e.g. Expander, 
as the Preferred Application, of any or all of the archive formats.

> maybe in the tracker-settings one could set what the default
> zip/unzip fileformat is to be used (ZIP or RAR/ARC/etc...)

With archives mounted as volumes, there would be no default archive 
fileformat, only volumes as usual, and Tracker wouldn't need any extra 
knowledge or extra menu items.

/Jonas Sundström.                www.kirilla.com

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