File packaging question

[Bookmarc]

Hi all,

I'm currently writing an application that uses a combination of binary and XML files to describe it's data. The problem I'm facing now is that I would like to pack all these files into a single one so that users can easily transfer them.

I've been looking at multiple options :
- tar file;
- uncompressed zip file (like docx files, pk3, etc);
- home made format.

Any of you using these kind of files in your application ?
If so, what library are you using ? What would you suggest ?
I'd like to be able to read the files inside the archive without extracting them to a temporary file (for example, the binary part could be several hundreds of Mbytes, so extracting it would be too long...).

Note that I don't want/need to compress the files, speed is really important here so compressing/decompressing is out of the question.

Thanks !

Marc

[patrik08]

Hi all,

I'm currently writing an application that uses a combination of binary and XML files to describe it's data. The problem I'm facing now is that I would like to pack all these files into a single one so that users can easily transfer them.

Marc

Have a look on openoffice format...

http://ciz.ch/it/software/content_ma..._14069000.html

Rename document.sxw to document.zip and open it... :-)




Or show My apache fop file editor on http://www.qt-apps.org/content/show....?content=67552

Sample ....
http://fop-miniscribus.googlecode.co...stDocument.fop
image are inline xml as SVG

zip on qt http://quazip.sourceforge.net/ only Gnu compiler maybe http://www.libqxt.org/page/index planing to make its run to all compiler...

[wysota]

If you don't want to extract before reading then tar might be a good idea. Otherwise I suggest you use a home made format similar to what tar does - just concatenate the files adding some headers to denote offsets and sizes of each file within the archive. You can also embed the files into your application binary using Qt resource system but it will then make those files readonly and they will be occupying memory even if you don't use them.