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

[Raul A. Gallegos]

Hello Joel. The reason you cannot read a compressed file without 
extracting it first typically is not because it's encrypted. Try to 
think of a zip file like a package. When you order something in the 
mail, it comes in one box. Think of this box as a .zip file. You open 
the box and take out the contents and do whatever. However what if the 
box had a combination padlock on it. You would need the combination in 
order to unlock this padlck before you took out the stuff in it. That is 
basically what a password encrypted zip file is.

Hope this helps.

Joel Deutsch wrote the following on 1/21/2009 12:34 PM:
> 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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