ZipView Overview

The new packaging format includes and is enabled by the new ZVFS Zip Virtual File System which supports mounting a Zip file as a tcl viewable filesystem. BrowseX  takes further advantage of this by supporting a new feature: Browsing web files in a zip archive. This lets us view a package of web content which we can move around, copy and distribute easily as a single object (sort of like PDF). This even works over the web, as the zip file is brought down and then mounted from cache.

This implementation mounts the archive when you visit it with BrowseX . ie.

  http://some.node.com/dir/pkg.zip

After mounting, the archive is searched for an index.htm or index.html at the top level directory. Case doesn't matter. The index file is displayed and any required IMG gifs etc inside the archive are also shown. You can even follow links to sublinks contained therein (eg. index2.html) and all works fine. All the files in the archive are generally available once mounted using the zip url as a prefix.

  http://some.node.com/dir/pkg.zip/index.html
  http://some.node.com/dir/pkg.zip/cow.gif
  http://some.node.com/dir/pkg.zip/foo.html

Restrictions

When accessing a zip file over the Internet, you must start at the zipfile name. This brings it down into cache where it is mounted as a local file.