Dear GAP Forum,
Dear Steve,
>
>Dima Pasechnik asked:
>
>> 1) I wonder why GAP is distributed as .zoo archive(s) rather than as
>> compressed tar files. (Other than historical reasons...)
>
>The problem is that, last time we explored this, many Windows and Mac users did
>not reliably have reliable tools to unpack gzipped tar archives, while we have
>a single source file that provides everyone with unzoo at the cost of one extra
>step.
>Also, since we control the unpacker, we have added a few non-standard
>features, to allow, for instance, automatic correct handling of text and binary
>files under Windows or MacOS.
I don't know about MacOS, but WinZip 7.0 (downloadable Win32 program,
see http://www.winzip.com)
unpacks *.tar.gz (or *.tar.Z, or *.tgz) files just fine;
moreover, it performs
the binary/text conversions, just as unzoo.exe that GAP download site
provides.
(And WinZip does not use any external programs for this, either).
[...]
>Another alternative that has been suggested to us is zip format
which, we are
>assured can handle text and binary nicely, and is now reliably available for
>UNIX, Windows and MacOS, however it doesn't seem to offer enough advantage over
>our present arrangements to justify the effort of changing at the moment.
>
IMHO, one application (unzoo) less to support would be a justification.
[...]
>> Also, I find the LF to LFCR transition it performs on textfiles rather
>> unfortunate, at least this is certainly not something one wants when
>> using Cygwin.
>
>The Windows binary unzoo.exe performs this translation, so that users can use
>non-cygwin ports of TeX and so on. If you compile the UNIX source file
>unzoo.c, under cygwin with the -DSYS_IS_UNIX compilation flag, then you should
>obtain a non-translating Windows unzoo (requiring cygwin.dll). If this doesn't
>work, get back to us.
>
No, this does not work, as CYGWIN's "r" and "w" values for the
corresponding parameter of fopen stand for textmode rather than for
binary mode.
One needes to create a special SYS_IS_CYGWIN target
for compilation, with these values appropriately set, that is to
"rb" and "wb", respectively.
(this prompting me to write the previos message in the 1st place).
Best wishes,
Dima