Re: mc 4.7.0pre3 support for .tlz archives

[Theodore Kilgore <kilgota banach math auburn edu>]

(follow-up)

On Wed, 28 Oct 2009, Theodore Kilgore wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Oct 2009, Helmut Hullen wrote:
>
> > Hallo, Theodore,
> >
> > Du meintest am 27.10.09 zum Thema Re: mc 4.7.0pre3 support for .tlz 
> > archives:
> >
> >
> > > > > Does anyone happen to know if similar procedures will open a
> > > > > Slackware .txz file or not?
> >
> > > > Slackware 13's mc works fine with .txz packages.
> >
> > > I am running Slackware-current right now, as I said. And the mc
> > > package which is installed is mc-20090714_git-i486-1.txz, dated July
> > > 14. It will _not_ open a txz file out of the box. So, are you saying
> > > it can be thus configured in the extension file?
> >
> > Strange.
> > Does "installpkg" work with *.txz packages (it should, of course).
> >
> > Viele Gruesse!
> > Helmut
>
> Of course it does. But the question from here is about how to set up MC to do 
> the kinds of things with .txz files which it can do with .tgz files. These 
> include at least the following:
>
> 1. F3 shows the directory structure inside the tarball.
> 2. Enter opens up the filesystem of the tarball, and such things can be done 
> as to view what is in them, to copy individual files or subdirectories out of 
> the tarball, and such.
> 3. F2 followed by x will extract the contents
>
> and so on.
>
> As I said, these things may very well be possible to set up. But none of them 
> currently work.
>
> Theodore Kilgore

Helmut,

Thanks, I found the problem. The difficulty is that one's own local mc.ext 
file (which my $HOME/.mc directory contains under the name "bindings")
is not overwritten when one does an upgrade, but instead is kept.

That one's own local bindings file is kept around is perhaps a good thing. 
But it is not an unmixed blessing. The results are bad if support for some 
new file format such as .txz gets missed. OTOH, the results of keeping the 
bindings file intact are good if one has had to edit the file in order to 
replace applications which are not on one's machine with applications 
which are present and do the same functionality. For example, I have to 
replace "gqview" with something else in order to view images and to do 
various other workarounds, too. I would hate for my workarounds and 
customizations to get blown away every time I upgrade Midnight Commander, 
because I depend on them.

So, thanks for pointing out that the support for .txz and such is already 
generally available. I guess what this points up is the need for more 
up-to-date and readily accessible documentation. But that is a problem 
that we all have to deal with, who produce software. I guess I have no 
answers.

Theodore Kilgore