tess - 1.3 94/01/26 00:30:15
README file for tess, tar extraction simplification script.

This file documents tess version 1.1.

Please send comments, suggestions, bug-reports, etc to
	pcoad@crl.com
Any feedback is welcome!

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 authorbe 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 licence".

2. Files:

README          this file
tess    	the tar extractor
Artistic	Larry Wall's "Artistic licence"

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 fo tess' uncompress facilities the programs
zcat and gzcat are required.

tess is totally based on tcl/tk.  There is no c-code and so should be easy
to install.   

4. Installation:

No compilation is required.  Extract by typing: 

	zcat tess.1.0.tar.gz | tar xvf -

If you already has tess you would type:

	tess tess.1.0.tar.gz

and select List/Extract -> Extract All.

5. Use:

tess is started from the command line.  If an argument is specified, it
is used as the Device entry (see below).

Device: 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: 
	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.

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
tarlist - sets the name of the temporary file 
have_gzcat - specifies a non-standard installation of gzip.

6. 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. 

7. 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.  (I have been thinking about this
though... drag-n-drop from a file manager?)  

Things to do:

* Add support for GNU tar.

* 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

* Make sure tess works with disjoint listbox selection. (If you know
  please e-mail me.)

8. 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.

9. Bug reports and suggestions:

pcoad@crl.com

10. Thanks:

Dr. John Ousterhout and the UCB for such a fun free language/toolkit.
My wife for her saintly patience.
All of those who sent me bug reports and suggestions.