".gz" files

From: Doc <doc_at_mdrconsult.com>
Date: Sat May 25 09:44:53 2002

On Sat, 25 May 2002, Roger Merchberger wrote:
> >something about in netscape you shouldn't click on a file you want to
> >download, you should right click on it and choose "save as" instead. I could
> >swear I remember seeing something posted about certain versions of netscape
> >you needed to download that way or something would go awry for certain
> >files? Just guessing from foggy memory, perhaps my recollection was related
> >to something else.
>
> Yes, sometimes Nutscrape will 'lend a helping hand' and autoconvert files
> for you, like it or not. It'll do this with .sit/.hqx files on Macintoshes
> as well...

  I had totally forgotten about that feature. I can't really speak to
Windows Netscape, but in Linux a downloaded .gz file was guaranteed to
be corrupt.
  That "feature" greatly boosted the popularity of both Mozilla and
bzip2 compression.
  Until Mozilla became stable enough for daily use, I used Lynx for
downloads. Now Mozilla writes your download, as a temporary file, into
/tmp, no matter what the target directory, then moves it to the target
only after the download completes. Since my /tmp filesystem is about
500M, I'm back to Lynx....

        Doc
Received on Sat May 25 2002 - 09:44:53 BST