I don't think we should use a compressed archive. Instead the binary data in the archive should be compressed.
I agree - and that's what ZIP/JAR allow for - some files/blobs are compressed, and some are not. You could either use the built-in methods to specify this, OR use the XML manifest.
That allows to choose the best compression scheme for the data and to combine different compression techniques in the archive.
Exactly!
As I pointed out in an earlier mail, I am not sure if a hierarchical structure in the archive is a good idea. In my opinion the hierarchy should only be defined in the XML part that describes how the contents of the archive should be put together. If we apply the document hierarchy to the archive, it will become painful to keep the XML description and the archive hierarchy in sync.
It's an interesting tradeoff.
If you leave it flat, that means that it's not possible to establish relationships between objects WITHOUT parsing the XML - so that standard archiving tools wouldn't be helpful.
On the other hand, you are right, that syncing the two could be a pain.
LDR -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leonard Rosenthol <mailto:leonardr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> <http://www.lazerware.com>
