Need some beta tester for a tar app
We've got an app we're trying to develop for managing tar files as easily as stuffit/zip files.
Tar/gz has some distinct advantages over sit or even sitx in that its universally used across platforms, is able to be command line driven for automatic backups, store permissions and other data better than sitx.
Anyhow - its really a choice to use tar.gz and we think that there is a market amongst a group of Mac users for this. We are now approaching beta and would love to get a few beta testers to provide feedback and testing, as well as receive free copies if they wish.
If you're interested, just let me know here and I'll add you to the beta list server.
Tar/gz has some distinct advantages over sit or even sitx in that its universally used across platforms, is able to be command line driven for automatic backups, store permissions and other data better than sitx.
Anyhow - its really a choice to use tar.gz and we think that there is a market amongst a group of Mac users for this. We are now approaching beta and would love to get a few beta testers to provide feedback and testing, as well as receive free copies if they wish.
If you're interested, just let me know here and I'll add you to the beta list server.
Comments
What would you have more?
TarMac is a full tar.gz browser in a cocoa UI. Selectively grab files, reorder them in the archive.
Again - think Stuffit Deluxe app. Not Stuffit Expander.
tm-subscribe
at
mail.webis.net to get on the list. We should have a beta by Sunday/Monday.
And let me do an example. I'm a developer so as a third copy of my sw (including a SCM and regular backups) I also do nightly cron job that tars my folders and copies it to an offsite server. There are times I need to grab a file from there that is just easier to grab because of where I may be. I just open it in TarMac and grab the file out. You can also incrementally backup your data with tar.
Originally posted by Akac
Again - think Stuffit Deluxe app. Not Stuffit Expander.
Just an opinion, Ive always seen SD as being bloated.. Lots of features you never really use... After all, the point really is just to get your stuff compressed or de-compressed.
So I now wanna ask, what features do people want that are usefull? Except being able to grab a single file out of compressed folder..
Originally posted by T'hain Esh Kelch
Just an opinion, Ive always seen SD as being bloated.. Lots of features you never really use... After all, the point really is just to get your stuff compressed or de-compressed.
So I now wanna ask, what features do people want that are usefull? Except being able to grab a single file out of compressed folder..
I think the biggest thing is being able to easily grab a file out and also append files. I agree that SD is bloated and we aren't going for that. But we are looking for the niche market of users who do use tar files and want an easy way to manage them.
Here is my quote:
I just want to clarify ? TarMac and OpenUp are two totally different things.
OpenUp is like Stuffit Expander. It just expands files. TarMac is a complete tar BROWSER and EDITOR, much like the Stuffit Deluxe full application.
So what OpenUp provides is of use, but has nothing to do with TarMac. In fact, a user would probably use both together. TarMac for creating, adding to, singly expand files from, or editing archives. And OpenUp to simply expand an entire archive.
> In regards to Alex Kac's StuffIt-alternative project, I recommend that people
> also look at OpenUp if they're not already familiar with it. It was written by
> Scott Anguish, a long-time NeXT and Mac developer who now runs the helpful
> Stepwise site. He also wrote a technical article about the design and
> development of OpenUp.
> _ While the application itself has been unchanged for a number of years now,
> it still performs well and I've use it on a number of occasions when Stuffit
> Expander would simply stall or crash. Any future efforts for
> decompression/archive software would do well to review this prior work as a
> starting point.
Originally posted by Akac
A lot. OpenUp just uncompresses the entire thing.
OpenUp can compress things too (i. e. create archives). Again, I'm just happy with OpenUp and the commandline zip, gzip and bzip2.
Why would I need to reorder things in an archive. After all the aim is gettting the dir structure back on disk.
If you could mount an archive as a disk ...
Originally posted by BNOYHTUAWB
OpenUp can compress things too (i. e. create archives). Again, I'm just happy with OpenUp and the commandline zip, gzip and bzip2.
Why would I need to reorder things in an archive. After all the aim is gettting the dir structure back on disk.
If you could mount an archive as a disk ...
Same reason you'd want to re-order things on your disk. Better organization. Especially for certain kinds of archives.
Probably for you TarMac isn't the right product for you. What OpenUp can't do it open an entire tar archive and let you manipulate it, grab just one file, etc... And frankly its an awful interface. I've tried it and I threw it away because it was so overly cumbersome I found it far faster to just use the command line.
All of this you can do at the command line, but we're doing a full blown GUI for it. Much like Transmit - why does one use a graphical FTP app? ftp at the command line works fine. Its really the exact same comparison.
The fact is we know we're selling to a niche market. For some, the GUI would be nice to use instead of opening the command line all the time. And that's what we're selling.