Re: .sea decoder for //GS

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <5gpbsg$n32@news.ysu.edu>,
Adalbert Goertz <be404@yfn.ysu.edu> wrote:
>That is not the problem I like to see addressed.
>When I download .sea files, to my //GS, they are probably packed by a mac.
>I have yet so find a file which can be unpacked by GSHK.

   If they're not in a publically documented format, figuring out how
to unpack them is a LOT of work, work that is up to the programmer to
decide if it's worth doing. Anyone packing up things in a format that
is not easy to unpack on other systems is pretty blindsided in the
first place, and those promoting and using those proprietary formats
for public data transfer should have some sense knocked into them.

   To unpack them for now, try and figure out who made them a .SEA (or
.EXE or .SIT or .CPT or any other idiotic proprietary format) to start
with, and bug them until they learn the error of their ways.

   Unfortunately, it looks like PCs are picking up this idiotic
system-specific packing formats, with self-extracting (on a PC only)
.EXEs. For now, all the stuff I've seen in that format are actual
applications (like Netscrape, Winzip, etc), not portable data files.
But, this'll probably increase for a while.

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein