[tex-live] [Fwd: Re: Could LZMA compression be combined with SFX format ?]

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:30:24 +0100 schrieb Philip TAYLOR:

>> You should also ask some windows user if they trust self extraction
>> archives. I at least don't like them. I prefer to look into an archive
>> and have an idea about the files involved and the pathes they use before
>> I extract the files.
> 
> I am not proposing to /remove/ the ability
> to look inside before unpacking; rather,
> I am proposing to remove the /need to/ look
> inside, if one is willing to trust the distributor.

Sure. But a lot of windows users don't know that they can look inside an
.exe-archive without executing it and even if they know they will
probably not know how to do it with an .exe that build on lzma. But they
know that an .exe file can be dangerous: If you sent or receive an
self-extracting file per e-mail it is often rejected. So if you really
care for *all* windows user -- not only the ones who click on every .exe
--, you will have to add an unpacker which allows them to look in the
.exe and tell them how to use it. And in this case you don't gain much
compared to the case where you add the unpacker and tell the user how to
use it to open and unpack the lzma. 


-- 
Ulrike Fischer