Amiga specific notes for UnZip 5.50 release of February 22, 2002
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The Info-Zip UnZip 5.50 package consists of C source code that compiles
on many platforms. Some systems, such as Amiga, lack a bundled C
language compiler, so we package and distribute supported executables
for those. This enables users who don't own compilers to have a
reliable source for obtaining executables directly from the developers.
This cuts down on the occurence of partial or haphazardly built
distributions.
For more information about Info-Zip, and the enclosed utilities, please
consult the README and doc files included in this archive.
To install the programs, copy the files UnZip, FUnZip, UnZipSFX, and
MakeSFX to a utility command directory where you normally place add-on
system commands. This would be a directory normally found in your
command path. Type "path" in a CLI window for a display of which
directories are in your path. The simplest choice is to place them all
in "C:", which is always in the path.
The official compiler for Info-Zip Amiga source used to be SAS/C version
6.51. Any compiler revision from 6.2 and above is supported in theory.
We do not support SAS/C 5.10b (too old) nor DICE (the programmer
dissapeared). But changes for the 5.2 and newer releases of UnZip are
largely untested with SAS/C, and so the current release has been compiled
with Manx Aztec C 5.2b. This compiler produces poorer code than SAS/C,
but the use of assembly language "hot spots" in the source minimizes the
difference in performance, and Aztec C is better than SAS/C at using 16
bit integers, which are faster.
Consult the file, WHERE, for information on where to obtain source code
if you would like a copy. It's free! If you have no access to any of
the sources listed therein, send electronic mail to the address listed
below, and be sure to state that you are working with the Amiga version
(we support at least a dozen platforms).
These programs run only as CLI commands, but are compatible with
Directory OPUS, SID, and IconX methods of execution.
UnZip 5.30 and newer have 8 bit character set support. When a file comes
from an MS-DOS-like system, upper-ascii characters in filenames are
converted, as nearly as possible, to the equivalent characters in the ISO
character set that the Amiga uses. For files originating on other
systems, such as Unixes or the Windows 95/NT version of Zip, no conversion
is needed.
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SELF-EXTRACTING ARCHIVES:
Version 5.2 or higher of UnZip for Amiga has the ability to create self-
extracting Zip archives, which will recreate the archived files when the
archive is executed as a program. This UnZip package is delivered as such
an archive in most cases. These are created using the UnZipSFX program.
On most platforms, all that is needed is to simply append the zip archive
onto the UnZipSFX program, but on the Amiga this does not work. Instead, a
program called MakeSFX is used to combine the two. The steps are to first
create an archive using Info-ZIP's Zip, and then combine it with UnZipSFX
using a MakeSFX command in this form:
MakeSFX <program_name_to_create> <archive_to_convert> [UnZipSFX_name]
For example, if you want to convert an archive named Foo.zip into a self-
extracting program named Foo.RunMe, you would use a command like this:
MakeSFX Foo.RunMe Foo.zip sys:tools/UnZipSFX
If the program UnZipSFX is in your current directory or in C:, the last
argument to MakeSFX can be ommitted (it defaults to "UnZipSFX" with no
path).
Note: using the command "Zip -A" with an Amiga self-extracting archive may
make the self-extracting program unrunnable with some versions of Zip.
Official releases of Amiga Zip 2.1 and higher ought to work okay, but Zip
2.0 and some betas of 2.2 fail to handle Amiga self-extractors correctly,
as do most versions of Zip for systems other than the Amiga.
The UnZipSFX program is itself compressed with PowerPacker 4.3 by Nico
Francois, to minimize the extra size added to the archive.
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AMIGA FILENOTES:
Normally, the comments that can be associated with Amiga files via the
FileNote command are not stored in zip archives. But the zip format
allows a freeform comment to be associated with each file, and/or the
archive as a whole. The Amiga ports of Zip and UnZip have an option -N
which allows filenotes to be stored as zipfile comments, and zipfile
comments to be restored as filenotes. If a Zip archive was created on
an Amiga using the -N option, then using -N with UnZip will restore
them. Using it at other times may create filenotes that are somewhat
meaningless, and possibly truncated if the original comment was longer
than 79 characters, but this should have no negative consequences in
most cases.
The -N option can be turned on permanently by setting the environment
variable UNZIP with the following commands:
SetEnv UNZIP -N
Copy ENV:UNZIP ENVARC:
Another option you will probably want to put into the UNZIP environment
variable is -C, which makes it look up filenames in zip archives case
insensitively. Because zip archives can be created on Unix systems,
there are cases where two files in an archive can have the same name
except for letter case. Because of this, the default behavior is that
if you want to extract a particular file from a zip archive, with a
command like this:
UnZip foo.zip SomeFile
You have to type the name "SomeFile" in the correct letter case or
nothing will be extracted. The -C option allows you to type the name in
any letter case, as you would with other Amiga commands. So I would
recommend this environment setting:
SetEnv UNZIP -C -N
If you need to issue a particular UnZip command with the -C option
turned off to match a file exactly, use --C in the command line.
Similarly, --N can suppress the creation of filenotes if -N is present
in the UNZIP environment variable.
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TIMEZONES:
When extracting files that have been archived with a GMT timestamp, UnZip
5.32 and up support a full implementation of reading timezone information
from the TZ environment variable, instead of the limited TZ support that
was previously included. If the variable TZ is not set, UnZip will use
the timezone set in your locale preferences. If you don't use a TZ
variable and just rely on the preference settings, then whenever daylight
savings starts, you should set the preferences timezone one hour east of
your actual timezone for accurate results.
If you do use a TZ setting, the way to set it up is to include a line in
your startup-sequence file looking something like this:
setenv TZ PST8PDT
That example is for the pacific timezone. If you live on the east coast:
setenv TZ EST5EDT
If you leave your system clock set to standard time year round, then you
should use a TZ variable that does not include DST information. For
example, such a timezone setting for Arizona could be given as:
setenv TZ MST7
(Note: if you are becoming confused, it may be because the instructions in
this section were incorrect in at least one previous UnZip release. But
then, so was the timezone support for a long time, so maybe it balanced.
Release 5.42 now features new improved timezone code which is copyright-
free and should eliminate some lingering bugs.)
In Europe, where the starting and ending dates for daylight savings time
are different, a string such as this one (for Germany) is needed:
setenv TZ MET-1MEST,M3.5.0,M10.5.0/03
The full syntax of TZ specifications is given in the file timezone.doc,
included in this archive.
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REPORT ALL BUGS AND COMMENTS TO INFO-ZIP: <Zip-Bugslists.wku.edu>
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If you want to redistribute this archive, make sure that all the following
files are included, as packaged in the original archive:
README.AMI 9574 ---arwed 22-Feb-02 22:36:16
README 12487 ----rwed 17-Feb-02 13:37:20
CONTENTS 5244 ---arwed 30-Sep-01 15:39:34
LICENSE 3020 ----rwed 16-Feb-02 10:30:00
WHERE 19126 ---arwed 26-Nov-01 22:28:00
UnZip 97844 ----rwed 22-Feb-02 22:13:00
fUnZip 20068 ----rwed 22-Feb-02 22:27:56
UnZipSFX 27020 ----rwed 22-Feb-02 22:33:18
MakeSFX 8632 ----rwed 22-Feb-02 22:23:18
unzip.doc 46671 ---arwed 14-Apr-00 18:56:14
zipinfo.doc 23884 ---arwed 14-Apr-00 18:33:50
zipgrep.doc 3537 ---arwed 14-Apr-00 18:33:50
timezone.doc 4385 ---arwed 21-Jan-98 05:30:58
funzip.doc 3901 ---arwed 14-Apr-00 18:33:46
unzipsfx.doc 13644 ---arwed 14-Apr-00 18:33:50
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This Amiga port is brought to you by:
Paul Kienitz <paulgning.net> (new address)
John Bush <John.BushEast.Sun.COM> (Amiga porter emeritus)
<JBushBIX.COM>
Walter Haidinger <walthaidunix.ict.tuwien.ac.at> (occasionally active)
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