> > I don't want to pay $72US (http://standards.ieee.org/catalog/it.html) > > to obtain the standards document (I dropped out of the IEEE) just to > > find out that it is mandating some backwards technology. > > It's tar files (or cpio archives) with control files in them, not > much different from what we have now.
See - I didn't want to pay $72 to find out that it was a tar file. :-) Actually, what we have now (an ar file with two gzipped tar files in it) is pure genious - superior to having a single gzipped tar file. Why? Because if a packaging tool (including supplementary ones) needs to access a control file, it just has to unzip a tiny file at the start of the file, instead of having to unzip the whole thing. Ian Jackson did a lot of things right -- it's just not apparent, since he wrote almost no documentation. Any idea how much it's going to cost us to participate in a closed standardization process through the IEEE? I'd guess that the large commercial vendors spend $100k's to participate fully... Cheers, - Jim
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