Re: 2qwk in Zip format. Why?

[dynasor@infi.net (Dennis McClain-Furmanski)]

LA County Outdoor Science School (lacoss@cello.gina.calstate.edu) wrote:
: The discussion of the latest 2qwk version prompted me to get it off of 
: ftp.cco.caltech.edu.  I got on and found it, but the file name is 
: iiqwk126.zip.  What is Zip format?  How do I unpack it?  And why the heck 
: wasn't it shrunk with ShrinkIt like everything else? 

: Thanks,  Greg

ZIP is a packer like SHK, but uses a different method. The full answer is
both technical and unnecessary. It's just different.

Because the QWK packets you recieve will either come in ZIP format, or have
ZIP format as one of several options. You'll have to be able to unZIP things
to use the program. This ensures that you develop the capability.

I suggest you get ANGEL. It unZIPs. And there's a script in the NAMEFIX
utility to patch your system software and ANGEL, so that you can have MS-DOS
style filenames in your directories. QWK packets come with indicies to the
mail text which have numbers for filenames -- like 000.NDX, 001.NDX, etc.
You have to be able to unpack files with names like these so the program can
process them, and you can't be having an unpacker which renames them, as SHK
would, to things like A00.NDX, A01.NDX, etc.

Besides, that's how the author sends it out, to save space.

--
dynasor@infi.net                                       The Doctor is on.