Compressed Files

   If you wish you can keep files on your server in a compressed format
   and uncompress them on the fly as a client requests them. You need a
   program to compress the files and a companion program to decompress
   them. I recommend "gzip" and "zcat" from the GNU project. They are
   considerably more efficient than the UNIX standard "compress."
   
   When configuring "_gn_" for compilation, be sure to set the #define
   DECOMPRESS in the file config.h to the path name of the program which
   will decompress the files you have compressed. The default value for
   this is "/usr/local/bin/zcat". Another possibility would be
   "/usr/ucb/uncompress -c".
   
   If the file you want to make available is "rootdir/dir1/bigfile,"
   first you must compress it with the compress command which will
   replace it with the file bigfile.gz or bigfile.Z. You then make a menu
   entry like the following (assuming bigfile was a text file and you
   have produced bigfile.gz).

     Name=All the text in Bigfile
     Path=0Z/dir/bigfile.gz
     Type=0

   
   
   The key here is the 'Z' which is the second character of the Path
   field. It indicates that the file is compressed. The Path would start
   with "0Z" (that's zero Z) for any compressed text file. It doesn't
   matter how the file was compressed or whether its name is bigfile.Z or
   bigfile.gz or something else. You have already told _gn_ how to
   decompress the file by specifying the DECOMPRESS program in config.h.
   
   Of course, if bigfile is a binary the Path field would be
   9Z/dir/bigfile.gz and the Type would be 9. For a sound file
   Path=sZ/dir/bigfile.gz, Type=s, etc. Files of types 0, 4, 5, 9, s, and
   I can be compressed. Structured files (type 1m) cannot be compressed.
   
   You might want to let users download the file in compressed format.
   You could give them the option by having the menu item as above with
   Path=0Z/dir/bigfile.gz and also having a menu item

     Name=Bigfile in compressed format
     Path=9/dir/bigfile.gz
     Type=9

   
   
   Note that the Type=9 since compressed files are binaries (even though
   bigfile is text) and there is no 'Z' as the second character of the
   Path, because now we do not want to decompress. Also note that two
   versions of bigfile show up on your menu (text and compressed binary)
   but there is only one file bigfile.gz on your disk.
   
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