handling zip files

[hamann.w at t-online.de]

>> 
>> IMHO the one type of binary file that it almost never makes sense to 
>> track is a .zip file - track the contents and generate the .zip file on 
>> the fly either using pythons zipfile module or using one of the command 
>> line zip file tools.
>> 
>> Gadget/Steve

Hi Steve,

the problem is that the application designers chose to use non-text files as there storage format,
so opening / saving the application file internally unpacks resp. creates a zip. This is similar to
openoffice, and the analogy goes even further ... most of the zip members happen to be xml

Normal use of the file is opening / modifying / saving it with its proper application, and while it would
be possible to create a specialized version of open-source tools like OO or add a wrapper
to closed-source tools, fellow users expect to see the native file format

So if there was a way for mercurial to handle the unzipping transparently, it would help
quite a lot because it would not disrupt the workflow. I would sort of expect the inner workings to be 
built on zipfile ...

Regards
Wolfgang