What Is Gzip

From: Lloyd Wood <L.H.Wood@student.lut.ac.uk> Subject: What is gzip? What do I need? textfile Date: Sat, 7 May 94 18:35:04 BST What is gzip? What is .gz? is asked on a regular basis in the Mac newsgroups. Attached is an information file I wrote, answering these questions. Although this file is now part of the MacGzip distribution, first the Mac user has to know that he or she needs MacGzip. I hope that uploading this file into the information directories will go some way towards addressing that. -- L. _____________________________________________________________________________ L.H.Wood@student.lut.ac.uk Email me for a copy of the Mac screensaver FAQ From: Lloyd Wood <L.H.Wood@student.lut.ac.uk> Subject: A real-life use of MacGzip for Mac users! To: macspd@ivo.cps.unizar.es (C) L.H.Wood <L.H.Wood@lut.ac.uk>. All rights reserved. Comments and corrections welcome. Second release - src.doc's umich mirror is /packages/mac-umich, not /packages/umich. Umich's PC and ST archives are also mirrored here, resulting in the changed name. Mentioned Grubb's ftp list. Added notes at end. Minor changes throughout. First release - corrections by SPDSoft, included in the MacGzip 0.2 -> 0.2.1 updater. USING src.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.3.7) AS YOUR MAC ARCHIVE SITE A guide to European/UK Mac users wanting to get the most out of a local Mac software archive mirror. US Mac users should look first to wuarchive.wustl.edu as the primary mirror of both info-mac and umich. Mac users running MacTCP should get the latest distribution of Fetch, which includes 'bookmarks' pointing at info-mac mirrors worldwide. Use the bookmark for your local mirror, and see Bruce Grubb's Mac ftp list, posted regularly in the comp.sys.mac.groups and in info-mac/info, for a list of other mirrors and other sites with interesting Mac-related files. src.doc.ic.ac.uk is a large ftp site based at Imperial College in London, England. It mirrors two of the important Mac sites - umich and sumex, or info-mac, and it's updated frequently. Since src.doc allows up to 300 simultaneous users, it would be a good idea to use it as your local Mac mirror, especially if you're in the UK. However, a few eccentricities of the site in comparison with usual Mac archives means that some extra thought is needed in getting files to a Mac. Here's what I've learned. This information is applicable to many other sites which have 'smart' ftp daemons, so it is useful to know even if you never use src.doc. Login as usual: ftp> name: anonymous ftp> password: name@site Putting the email address in your password is just the usual courtesy that lets an archive's maintainers know who is using it. (You can contact src.doc's maintainers at wizards@doc.ic.ac.uk) Look at the readmes at the top level of the archive for up-to-date information on how to retrieve files. I do this for any ftp site I use - it's amazing what tidbits you can pick up. The Mac archives of interest are as directories in packages: /packages…