bsrdp@warwick.ac.uk (Hylton Boothroyd) (03/30/90)
As a happy user of ZOO (c.b.i.p and all that) I have been hoping never
to have to bother with PKZIP. True, the appearance of ZIP's in the
SIMTEL archives have forced me into the use of a UNIX unzip on the
central Unix network that links me to the outside world - it's at that
level that I repack archives into ZOO's, complete with comments, before
downloading.
I like my header comment. I prepare it in an editor and when I have got
it just right
zoo cA my.zoo < header
adds it quickly and painlessly. It contains a note of where the archive
came from and up to 15 lines of nicely-formatted condensed comment
about main features, commands, and relevance to present and future
needs. So a
zoo Vf my.zoo
gives me an informative report, with several file names per line at the
bottom of the screen as with a unix `ls' command.
But the first few SIMTEL ZIPs repacked as ZOOs were so much bigger than
the ZIP originals that I thought I'd better see what PKZIP could do. I
unpacked it last night for a day's exploration today. Lovely manual.
But what a disappointment today has been! No chance of a decently laid
out header - at best just one long string of information ...
... except perhaps if I entered ANSI escape codes...
But no, every time I add an ASCII-27 to try to start an ANSI escape
sequence everything I have typed vanishes and I have to start again.
And when I list the files, "brief" turns out to be almost as much as
normal, there's no way of avoiding one-set-of-file-info-per-line. I
can't bear it! Screeeeaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hylton