tkArchive 0.1
10/16/98
Ethan Gold <etgold@cs.columbia.edu>

Overview:
---------
tkArchive is (will be) a comprehensive GUI interface to
the most common file (not tape - not now, anyway) archives
under found on Un*x systems. In simple tcl/tk based GUI it
will provide a front-end to listing, compressing, and extracting
entire archives and components of archives.

Features:
---------
* Takes filename as an argument - great as a filemanager helper
* Takes multiple filenames as arguments
* Can run standalone and open archives from within itself
* Create archives
* Append to archives
* Not a cluttered mess

Supported Archives:
-------------------
tar + gzip	now
    + compress	now
    + bzip2	now

zip		soon
cpio		?
sit		?
arc		?
arj		?
hqx		?
lha		?
lzh		?

Currently Supported Operations:
-------------------------------
Right now only listing, extraction, save as, close, and open are
supported.  In the next few weeks I will add compression support,
appending support, and the modules for the other archive types. See
the structure section below. Right now only GNU tar is supported.
Supporting older tar's would probably require a separate plugin and
handling due to their basic stupidity regarding compression and
options.

Architecture:
-------------
tkArchive is built as a main front-end providing the main
GUI and file handling routines. Native language (tcl) plugins
provide the support for individual archive types. The plugins
are simply scripted interfaces to specific command-line programs
which export (the plugins export) an API to the main GUI.


Bugs, Suggestions, etc.:
------------------------
Email the author, Ethan Gold, at etgold@cs.columbia.edu
If you'd like to write a plugin, I'll do whatever I can
to help. The more file formats tkArchive can handle, the
better. If you want to write a plugin for your favorite
type of archive, let me know!

Acknowledgements:
-----------------
Thanks to Mario Jorge Silva <msilva@cs.Berkeley.EDU> for
his fileselect code which I've hacked to pieces.
