[delphizip] Re: NanoZip, the DLLs, etc.
- From: "James Turner" <james.d.h.turner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <delphizip@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 21:50:21 -0000
Support for zip files can basically be split into two parts.
1 : Compression / decompression of data streams.
2 : Extraction of file information / archive manipulations (rename, delete,
etc.)
Basically, any half-decent programmer can solve part 2: On the other hand,
compression/decompression is seriously deep stuff.
What is really needed is code with a clean interface to perform compression
and decompression. From there, wrappers to perform all the necessary
manipulations can be written without any great difficulty. As I see it, the
problem with the DLLs is that they do too much and the interface is overly
complex. That said, I have a need for a purely Delphi minimal unzip solution
and I'll be starting work on this tomorrow.
So far as NanoZip is concerned, I have yet to form an opinion on its overall
design, but if the author is agreeable, it could serve as the source for
implementing a pure compression/decompression engine. A zip wrapper for such
an engine would be very useful but the advantage of structuring things this
way is that if someone wants to implement a new archive format (e.g. Z++)
they should be able to do so without any great difficulty. Also, if someone
needs to work with, say, memory streams they could ignore the zip wrapper
and work purely with the compression/decompression engine. Surely, if major
changes/new code is under discussion, this should be the direction we move
in - ie create flexible and modular code.
Well, that's my opinion - I'm sure that plenty will disagree.
-- James Turner
www.skaro.net
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