Re: Packaging? - Oh you mean Compound documents

"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:
> 
> At 07:41 PM 7/28/00 +1200, David Mohring wrote:
> >I suggested using the zip ( or now java jar ) file format some time ago.
> >
> >http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/199902/msg00101.html
> 
> I'm not sure that packaging will always involve delivering every document
> described, so I'm not sure that a zip/jar format makes sense in general.
> 
>
> A non-validating parser might be interested to know some details about a
> document, for instance, but might not care to download every related 
> document.
Then this is something that is done on the server the http protocol level.

Some ftp servers have the option of downloading the entire content of
a directory by requesting the directory with the archive affix 
i.e. directory /pub/X as /pub/X.zip or /pub/X.tar or pub/X.tgz etc.
Having an http server being able to do this on demand would not
be to difficult.   

If you are looking for individual file/fragment compression at the http
level then the Mozilla project includes a patch to the apache web server 
that uses gnu gzip to compress http requests on demand.

> 
> Also, parsers tend to process more than one document of a particular type,
> making caching potentially a more useful strategy than combination and
> compression.
> 

That is true if the content is always going to be stored on some form of
server, but most users would like the option of being able to store the 
document/view under one filename on their file system. 
It makes things a lot easier when for example retaining a referential 
copy or forwarding the document/view to someone else via email.

This could be an operation that is performed at the user client browser end.

The advantage of using zip over a proprietary W3/XML based compression
and archive scheme is that most platforms have the existing tools
to deal with this format. It would be easy to provide shell/gui wrappers 
that expand the archive to a temporary directory for processing by existing 
tools. Proxy servers that unpack/expand zip/jar files could be used
with existing database products. 

The other BIG advantage is that all of the existing Anti-virus products 
can scan inside zip and jar files. Given the recent exploitable bugs that 
have come to light in Microsoft Internet Explorer and other products, 
the last thing the internet needs is another file format or protocol 
that can be used to tunnel through firewalls ( like https/ssl ) and 
hide from existing anti-virus products.

David Mohring - more buttons or a zip on the fly?

Received on Friday, 28 July 2000 13:40:38 UTC