Re: Bochs - Free PC emulator
Re: Bochs - Free PC emulator
- Subject: Re: Bochs - Free PC emulator
- From: Angela Brett <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 15:59:52 +1300
I don't know much about which alternative preserves which metadata
but here's my take on it...
Also, what seems to be missed here is the fact that 90% of files
downloaded by your average user don't contain executable items.
Images, text files, icon libraries, etc. I don't want some bloated
disc image just for a few icons.
Well, two of those items (images and text files) usually don't need
to be compressed anyway, so that doesn't really matter. At any rate,
I was specifically talking about distributing *software* in this
thread.
It's not particularly relevant, but probably most of what I get from
the internet is email and web pages, which of course are not packaged
in any special way. I'd say 90% of my downloads of large files are
applications. Other people download a lot of mp3s, movies etc and
again they're not packaged in any special way... the main thing I
know of which is distributed in a disk image or archive of some kind
is software.
The latest version of Expander, which is necessary to extract the
latest version of the StuffIt format, does not ship with OS X, since
it came out later than OS X. There is no way to guarantee that users
will have it. It does not operate in the background - it jumps to
the front every time it is used.
Hmm... I haven't noticed it doing that any more than Disk Copy
does... but perhaps I'm just not very observant, or I switch another
app back to the foreground immediately anyway.
To all other users, the ability to simply drag and drop a file
wherever they want is much more intuitive and useful.
I don't see what that has to do with disk images versus other
archives... all methods (well, apart from Installer packages I
suppose) let the user drag and drop the file wherever they want. The
difference with disk images is than instead of simply moving the
file, they have to copy it, which does take a while. Not as long as
it takes to download the file to start with, but long enough to be
annoying sometimes, as it slows down anything else which is using the
disk. I know the file is on my hard disk already, and yet I need to
copy it.
It's fine to have installers on disk images, because then I'm just
running the installer from the image which would have to copy files
either way. I would have deleted the installer anyway so the extra
step of putting the .dmg file in the trash is not such a hassle. But
copying a plain ol' application file from one place on my disk to
another seems wasteful and slow.
Disk images take forever to mount, are buggy to eject and
manipulate, as mentioned, and are a general pain. Ever tried to
mount a thousand or so at once? If you start now you might be able
to before your computer rusts.
Buggy to eject and manipulate in what way?
I thought that too when I first read the comment. But yesterday I was
reminded... I put a disk image in the trash and now when I try to
empty the trash I got an error (-8062.) That's happened in the past
with a disk image - I have to log out before I can empty the trash.
Well, perhaps I could remove it using the command line, but I'm a Mac
user, damnit, and I use the GUI! :)
Does it delete the archive afterwards, even after a failed
extraction, like Expander does?!
Hey, I happen to think that deleting the archive afterwards is a good
thing, I wish .dmgs would be deleted automatically. I've never seen
Expander delete the archive when the extraction fails... maybe I
don't have the latest version. Anyway, I'm not particularly
advocating Stuffit (I have seen it fail to open archives before, and
indeed it does chop the ends off long file names), just pointing out
why I don't particularly like disk images.
1. You most certainly can browse disk images like folders. Just
double-click the mounted disk image's icon. This is part of the
beauty of disk images.
Well, that's the beauty of hierarchical file systems actually. Just
like drag'n'drop, the ability to browse something just like folders
after it's been decompressed/mounted/whatever has nothing to do with
how it was packaged. (Unless it's an installer package of course.)
You can even browse them without downloading their contents, via
hdiutil (really handy when you just want to read the read me or get
one app from a 20 MB application suite package without downloading
the whole thing!).
2. You can easily mount them somewhere other than /Volumes via the
command line. You could even probably whip up a really quick Cocoa
app to automate this.
I don't think either of these things are particularly relevant. The
average user (at least, the average user who comes from Mac OS rather
than from NeXTStep/BSD/Linux or whatever) uses the GUI, especially
for simple things like opening files downloaded from the internet.
Sure, if web browsers automatically used hdiutil to mount disk
images, it'd be okay. (Well, maybe not actually... it might somewhat
confuse the novice who doesn't realise they have to drag the file
somewhere before going offline... but then I suppose it's just like
an iDisk and we're all supposed to be able to use those.) But they
don't. So hdiutil is only useful to people who know how to use the
command line and hdiutil, and can be bothered copying a URL,
switching to a terminal and typing in a command rather than clicking
on a link.
3. Drag-and-drop is an essential part of the Mac OS X metaphor which
is not going to go away (nor should it!). This is the way of the
future, and it is how you install files.
Again, that's how you install files no matter whether they were in a
disk image, StuffIt archive, or some other kind of archive (except
Installer packages, which are a different issue entirely, they're
used when files have to be put into specific places or whatever.)
It's part of the Mac OS X metaphor, and is not going to go away, no
matter how the files were archived to begin with.
You might respond that with a StuffIt archive you have to doubleclick
the file to decompress it first, but you also have to doubleclick
disk images to mount them first. Both tasks are usually handled
automatically by web browsers anyway so it's not an issue.
Hey, cut the ad hominem attacks. We're all friends here, regardless
whether we disagree on things.
Yeah. Anyone want a nice cup of cocoa* with a chocolate fish in it?
The marshmallow and chocolate melt really nicely. :)
* I'd call it hot chocolate, but I've heard Americans call it cocoa
and that seemed more fitting for this list.
--
Angela Brett email@hidden
http://acronyms.co.nz/angela
"[I] am rarely happier when spending an entire day programming my computer to
perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds
to do by hand" -- Douglas Adams in 'Last Chance to See'
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