Re: LYNX-DEV bzip2 support in Lynx?

[David Woolley]

> 
> > After checking out bzip2, a better compression tool than gzip that is
> > GPL'd (http://www.muraroa.demon.co.uk/), I was wondering how to make

Compression is one of the danger areas for software patents.  One way
of making a better gzip would be arithmetic coding, but that couldn't
then be distributed in the USA.  I think it might be useful to outline
the basis of the compression algorithm (gzip uses offset and length of
earlier occurrences then variable length encodes these parameters using
a tree type encoding, like Huffman, but a different name - might be a
generic name).  If it is patented in the USA and the code is derived from
gzip, it might may an interesting test case for the rules on adding 
distribution restrictions in the case of derived works, with none of the
other politics that would be involved in the SSL case.

> > lynx support these files. bzip2's interface is purposely similar to
> > gzip's so it would seemingly be very easy to do.
> 
> I would have thought so, too, but I hit a snag.   Wonder if you had the
> same problem.  Anyway, in `mime.types' I put "application/x-bzip2   bz2",
> and in `mailcap' I put "application/x-bzip2; /usr/local/bin/bzip2 -d %s".

By analogy with gzip, this should be /usr/local/bin/bzip2 -d -c %s.
                                                             ^^

However, compression is a content-encoding, not a content type, and support
is hard coded, at least in 2.7, not via mailcap.  (Servers tend to use
data driven methods for both, and Lynx probably should, but this is more
than the cut and paste sort of change I suggested.)

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