## History and Links

plus Installation and Contact Hints created 1.Jun.2000, last updated 25.Apr.2002

### A Bit Of History

You'll find gzip using the same compression that was written by Jean-loup Gailly for the Info-Zip Group whose Zip program is compatible with msdos PKZIP program from PK Ware. Then, in collaboration with Mark Adler he wrote the zlib compression library which was later standardized in the zlib RFCs, namely RFC 1950 zlib 3.3, RFC 1951 deflate 1.3 and RFC 1952 gzip 4.3. The free algorithm can be found in lots of places today including PPP packet compression and PNG picture compression.

### Installation

The installation is from the source .tar.gz tarball does follow the simple gnu style: type `''configure && make install''` in the unpacked directory. This will actually perform the usual sequence of `''configure && make && make install''`. The use of `''make rpm''` will make rpms based on your system setup, and using a decent mingw32 compiler (e.g. the crossgcc from libsdl.org/Xmingw32) will allow you to create windows dlls using a gnu development environment. MSVC and Borland support (Make-)files should be easy to be derived from the Makefile.am

### Contact

The library was developed by Guido Draheim based on the library `zip08x` by Tomi Ollila (many thanks for his support of the zziplib project). He has provided a good deal of testing rounds and very helpful comments. It may be assumed that this library supersedes `zip08x`, and in April 2002, he has even given up copyright restrictions coming from zip08x and changed the zip08x readme to point to zziplib. Anyone who wants to contribute in accessing zip-archives with the zlib-library is hereby kindly invited to send us comments and sourcecode.

### Links

The zziplib library must be linked with the free zlib [1] [2] [3] package originally developed by the Info-Zip Group and now maintained at the GZip Group. As of late, the pkware appnote.txt has been revised into a whitepaper document named "APPNOTE.TXT - .ZIP File Format Specification". Be also aware of other zzip like projects, e.g. zipios++ that mangles zip access into C++ iostream facilities.