[gui-talk] the new and improved bookshare.org

[tribble]

afaik is "as far as I know"
--le

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel Deutsch" <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] the new and improved bookshare.org


Raul,

a couple of questions. First of all, what is AFAIK? I never heard that word
before.

Second, I know nothing about the history of Bookshare in regard to file
types it's used to download material. But I have used .zip files and
unpacked/extracted them on my computer with several different programs over
the years, and although I was quite aware that you most likely couldn't read
a compressed text file if you tried to, I didn't know that was considered
deliberate encryption. Maybe there's always been an option in these unzip
programs' menus that offered encryption and/or decryption, and I never
noticed that because I didn't explore those menus item by item in ever case
with Jaws and of course didn't just *see* the options the way a sighted
person would without really trying.

And now I generally extract the contents of a zipped file by just opening my
applications context menu from the keyboard (just to the left of the right
control key) and choosing Extract or Extract Here or whatever. So I still
don't notice anything about encryption, maybe because I explored that menu
once, but then forgot most of it except the options I use.

Anyway, thanks. I'm sure if I were to join Bookshare, it would work just
fine .
Joel
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Raul A. Gallegos" <raul at asmodean.net>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 8:37 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] the new and improved bookshare.org


Hello. The bks format was their own proprietary format AFAIK. However
.zip has always had password encryption in addition to the compression
so this is nothing new. Back in the early 90s when i used pkzip and
pkunzip from dos, it too had encryption via password. Winzip, and my
favorite, 7-zip has it too. So it's quite normal.

Hope this helps.

Joel Deutsch wrote the following on 1/21/2009 11:14 AM:

> L.
>
> I'm not a Bookshare person now, although I might jhoin in future. Two
> things
> you said confused me. I hope you'll explain.
>
> You say that the book files used to be "encrypted" as .bks files, and now
> they're encrypted as .zip files. Well, I'm unfamiliar with the first file
> extension, so I can't guess if that means how a single book or group of
> books is downloaded, or whether what's downloaded has to be extracted
> then.
>
> But I know that .zip files are generally not an encryption method but
> rather
> file compression to make a package smaller, and that you have to simply
> unzip (unpack) that in order to have all the compressed files extract
> themselves and be ready to use.
>
> So is the first extension you minion actually a proprirateary file type,
> as
> .obx is for Open Book, for instance, and you need a special reader to make
> use of them? Same way you need a copy of Open Book to access an .obx file?
> Or is it a compression type I just haven't heard of?
>
> And is the .zip extension used by Booshare for encryption  in some way
> that
> I never heard about regarding the uses of the .zip method?
>
> Thanks a lot. you might guess, correctly, that I'm so ignorant about how
> Bookshare works that I thought its inventory consisted simply of scanned
> text files that you downloaded as they were or maybe as .zip files and
> then
> extracted to use them. i guess it's more complicated, what with these
> additional file types, such as  .css, that you mention being involved,
> too.
-- 
Raul A. Gallegos -- http://www.asmodean.net


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