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README file for tess, tar extraction simplification script.
This file documents tess version 3.2.
Please send comments, suggestions, bug-reports, etc to
pcoad@crl.com
Any feedback is welcome!
If you use tess please let me know. I want only to track the distribution
of tess. User lists will not be sold. No salesmen will call.
1. Legal Stuff:
Copyright 1994, Paul E Coad
The author disclaims all warranties with regard to this software, including
all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event
shall the author be liable for any special, indirect or consequential
damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or
profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other
tortuous action, arising out of or in connection with the use or
performance of this software.
This package is being released under the terms of Larry Wall's
"Artistic license".
2. Files:
README this file
tess.tmpl the tar extractor template
tkcd.tmpl directory changer hyper-tool template
tkcf.tmpl file selecter hyper-tool template
tessinst tess installation tool
Artistic Larry Wall's "Artistic license"
library/
disjoint.tk DISJOINT.TK v1.1 - by Paul Raines
fileselect.tcl file select box - by Mario Jorge Silva (modified)
read.tcl tar file related routiles.
tessdlg.tk common dialog routine.
tclIndex index file of procedures in the above files
docs/
hyper.txt descriptions of tess, tkcd, tkcf, and hyper-tools.
tess.1 the man page for tess
tkcd.1 the man page for tkcd
tkcf.1 the man page for tkcf
3. General:
tess attempts to simplify the extraction of tar archives by providing a
graphical interface to the tar command. tess provides for automatic
decompression of compressed or gziped archives. Since tess requires
tar and compress it may not work under any operating system which is
not Unix-like. To make use of tess' uncompress facilities the programs
zcat and/or gzcat are required. Although not required GNU tar is
strongly reccomended.
* tess is totally based on tcl/tk.
* tess contains no c-code.
* tess includes an installation script to ease installation.
4. Warning:
This package includes tools which rely on the use of send. If your
system is unable to use send (you are using xhost authorization) you
will not be able to use the change file and change directory tools.
You are strongly encouraged to switch to xauth authorization which
is a much stronger authorization scheme for X.
If you specified 1 for the use_mht variable and the change directory
and change file programs to not seem to be changing the directory
or file, you are probibly running xhost. In this case you have a few
choices:
1. Change the use_mht variable to 0. This will disallow the use of
the change directory and file tools, but will cause fileselect to
be used for changing the file. You will not be able to change
directory other than starting tess in a different directory.
2. Recompile tk with the -DTK_NO_SECURITY flag set. This will disable
checking for xhost security. (THIS OPTION IS VERY INSECURE.)
3. Beg your system administrator to switch to xauth authorization. If
you are the system administrator you can ask yourself why you are
still using xhost.
5. Installation:
No compilation is required. Extract by typing:
zcat tess3.1.tar.gz | tar oxvf -
If you already has tess you would type:
tess tess3.1.tar.gz
and select List/Extract -> Extract All.
The tess package now uses a tclsh based installation tool. To install
follow the following steps:
1. Set the #!path voodoo so that the path points to the tclsh executable
or the wish executable if tclsh is not on the system.
2. Set the wish_path variable for the !#path voodoo for the wish executable
3. Set the base_dir variable to be the base directory under which
to place tess files. The default is /usr/local. The binary_dir, man_dir,
and tess_lib can also be set, but the defaults should be the best. Make
sure that base_dir/binary_dir is in your PATH, or tess may not be to
find tkcd and tkcf.
4. Set the defaults for your system and desires. Reasonable defaults are
provided.
5. Type: ./tessinst
Defaults for several options can be set within tess:
default_device - sets the default value to appear in the Device entry.*
default_owner_perms - sets the Owner Perms flag.*
default_update_mod_time - sets the Update Mod Time flag*
temp_dir - sets the name of the directory in which to place temporary files*
use_mht - specifies the ability to use send.*
have_gzip - specifies existence of gzip and friends**
have_gzcat - specifies a non-standard installation of gzip.**
have_funky_tar - specifies that tar writes everything to stdout.
tar_cmd - specifies the name of the tar program to use.
devices - can be used to assign aliases to devices.
* - Now setup in the installation script
** - Now determined automatically by the installation script
All of the above should need to be set only once so are not changed through
menu options or settings.
6. Use:
tess is started from the command line. If an argument is specified, it
is used as the File entry (see below). Like any description of a GUI
the following is best used as a reference. IMHO tess is fairly simple
to use (few moving parts!) Try it out then look at the documentation.
File: (button) starts tkcf for selection of a file. Selecting a file in the
list (double clicking, or pressing the Select button ) will list the file
in the tess' listbox. See the description of the tkcf below for more
details.
File: (entry) enter the name of the device (file) from which to extract
the archives. Pressing the Enter key in this field will cause the
archive to be listed in the listbox.
List/Extract:
Change Directory: starts the tkcd program for changing the current
working directory.
List Archive: reads the named archive and displays a list of the
contents in the listbox.
Extract All: extracts all files from the named archive.
Extract Selected: extracts the files selected in the listbox.
About: shows the legal stuff in a window.
Quit: quit.
Options:
Owner Perms: when set "on" the extracted files take the owner and
group ID of the user running the program.
Update Mod Time: when set "on" the extracted files will have a
modification time of the time of extraction.
Devices:
The devices menu displays aliases for available devices. This allosw
/dev/fd0 to be named "Floppy 1" or /dev/rmt0 "Reel Tape".
tkcf window:
File: (menu) displays a menu which contains one or twooptions. If tkcd is
not owned, the options are:
Select Application (pull right menu) which displays another menu of the
available tk based applications. Selecting an
application from this menu selects the application
to which cd commands will be sent. The Select
Application option only appears in unowned instances
of tkcf.
Quit exits from tkcf.
list (scrolling list) displays a list of files and directories. Directories
end with a forward slash "/" and executable files end with an asterisk
"*" (this is simmilar to the output from the command ls -F). Double
clicking with button-1 on a dirctory will cause the current contents of
the list to be removed and be replaced with the contents of the selected
directory. Double clicking with button-1 on a file will list the
selected file in tess' scrolling list.
current directory (message area) displays the path to the directroy displayed
in the scrolling list described above.
Select (button) changes the tess' current file to the file selected in tkcf's
scrolling list.
7. Changes
Changes since 3.1
- Added warnings in the README file about the use of send and xhost
authorization.
Bugs:
- Fixed a problem with the version of the tessinst script. The version
variable was commented out.
- Fixed a problem with attempting to use files which do not exist.
Changes since 3.0
Enhancements:
- The installation script now uses a version number for the tess_lib
directory.
Bugs:
- Fixed a bug in the installation script and the template files. tess_lib
was not being set the installed library.
- Fixed a #! voodoo problem. The -f was missing from the voodoo line.
- Fixed a small problem with tkcf where it would return the current
directory to tess for listing.
Changes since 2.0
Enhancements:
- It looks better IMHO. The clunkieness rating of tess has been reduced.
The commonly used features like listing and extracting are now available
as buttons.
- Buttons for listing and extracting have been added to the bottom of the
window to ease commonly performed operations.
- The Device: button has been relabeled File:.
- A Devices menu has been added to allow names to be associated with devices.
(Hopefully this will make use of the program useful for people unfamilliar
with tar, gzip, and compress.)
- The temporary file used by tess now uses the process id to lessen the
chances of two instances of tess interfering with each other.
- Fields for displaying the current working directory and messages have been
added. The Messages field displays the number of files found and extracted.
- tess now uses the programs tkcd and tkcf to change directories and files
respectively. Both programs use send. fileselect is still being
distributed with tess in case some sites can not use send. Unfortunately
if send is not available there is no way to change the current directory
short of quiting out of tess changing to the desired directory and restarting
tess. More information about tkcd, tkcf and hyper-tools is availible in the
file named hyper.txt in the doc directory.
- An attempt to shield the user from the cryptic and sometimes incorrect
error messages produced by tar, compress, and gzip has been made. Since
tar and compress are implemented slightly differently some messages will
not be caught and made sensible. Please notify me by email if a message
is not caught which you believe should have been. Please include the
system type and version, the message, and anyother relavent information.
Bugs:
- None reported, none fixed.
Nits:
- A bug relating to resizing the main window has been fixed. After the user
resized the main window tess was not able to resize the window to match
the line lengths when listing files. This has ben fixed.
Changes since 1.1
Enhancements:
- Disjoint selections of files inside of the archive are now allowed
thanks to Paul Raines' DISJOINT.TK v1.1.
- The archive file now can be selected (from the Device: button) by
means of the fileselect box thanks to Mario Jorge Silva's fileselect.tcl.
- Files ending in ".tgz", ".taz", and ".taZ" are now recognized as being
zipped/compressed tar files. (This enhancement really requires gzip.
If you don't have it, it can be obtained at prep.ai.mit.edu in /pub/gnu.)
Bugs:
- One portability problem has been fixed. At least one version of tar
writes everything to stderr, a redirector was added to cover this.
If you have this kind of tar, set the variable have_funky_tar to 1.
Nits:
- Windows are automatically resized to display the longest line in the list.
- Some typos in tess and the README file have been fixed.
- Moved tessdlg to the library so it can be used elsewhere.
Changes since 1.0
- Added options in the code for setting the defaults on the Options menu.
- Removed the zcat is gzcat option from the options menu and added a
configuration option to specify non-standard gzip installations.
- Fixed 2 bugs related to extracting a subset of files.
- Changed the list boxes to have fixed size fonts.
- Added an "About" window to show legal stuff.
8. To Do:
tess attempts to provide a simple interface to the tar command, and so
does not deal with the less used options of the tar command. tess does
not even deal with creating an archive.
Things to do:
* Document more of the code.
* Add support for drag and drop, busy, and bgexec and other cool BLT stuff.
* Find ways to minimize the annoyances listed below.
* Add nroffed man pages to the distribution.
* Add a build archive tool.
9. Annoyances:
* On SVR3.2 systems with short (14 character) file names, tar does not
properly extract files with long file names when it is extracting from
stdin. This may be true on other systems.
* On my system occasionally the message "child killed: write on pipe with no
readers" is displayed. All of the files are listed and can be extracted
but the annoying message is displayed. Related to this when tar files
contain archived directories (e.g. src/, src/port/, src/port/sun) an
error dialog is displayed stating that the directories can't be created.
I think this is a problem when the tar file was created on a BSD system
and is being read on a (old?) SYSV system. The messages are annoying
but in most cases can be ignored.
10. Bug reports and suggestions:
pcoad@crl.com
Your suggestions (especially when accompanied with code) are welcome
and weigh heavily in the selections of new features for new releases.
11. Thanks:
Dr. John Ousterhout and the UCB for such a fun free language/toolkit.
My wife for her saintly patience.
Harold A Pagenkopf, for a lifetime of inspiration.
All of those who sent me bug reports, suggestions, and code including:
John Harres, Jens Henrik Jensen, Dimitry Kloper, and Pat Niemeyer.