Archives in Content Mangler

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

In the Settings of Content Manager it refers to Archives. I've never used this feature, so I was wondering;

- what format are these Archives expected to be in (e.g. CDP files or just 'unpacked' asset folders)?

- does the Archives button do anything more than take you to a folder where these Archives are kept?

 

[JCitron]

Hi Deane,

These are in .CMA format or Content Manager Archive. The data will be extracted from them just like they are from CDPs, except this is done through the settings in the file menu.

Beware though. There is a 2GB file-size limit to these files which can cause great heartache when creating and reading back due to file corruption. This is a problem, not just with N3V, but other programs that used an older compression algorithm from PKZip. Microsoft had this issue with their archve support as well.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301325

and so did Sun/Oracle

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6599383

John

 

[shaneturner12]

In the Settings of Content Manager it refers to Archives. I've never used this feature, so I was wondering;

- what format are these Archives expected to be in (e.g. CDP files or just 'unpacked' asset folders)?

- does the Archives button do anything more than take you to a folder where these Archives are kept?

Deane - I have a blog entry in my Trainz Technical and Operational Tips and Tricks blog for the Archiver.

Shane

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Thanks for both answers. Looks like its another feature not worth bothering about due to bugs or poor design.

 

[shaneturner12]

Not sure on poor design, but there are limitations, just like with CDP files.

Shane

 

[JCitron]

Deane,

This is not the fault of N3V or the other software developers that used the original PKZIP engine. This is the fault of the people that created the engine in the first place. This is a 32-bit file-size limit, and will only change when developers adopt the 64-bit filesystems more and more. Only recently has Winzip updated to a 64-bit version that will handle archives above the 4GB limit.

http://kb.winzip.com/kb/entry/99/

John

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Sorry but I disagree. It is the fault of N3V to adopt an archive format that has a fundamental problem.

 

[JCitron]

Sorry but I disagree. It is the fault of N3V to adopt an archive format that has a fundamental problem.

Maybe you misunderstood what I was saying. I can be a bit obtuse sometimes in my explanations, especially after I've been medded up! This PKZIP format is THE standard that has been around for over 30 years. This dates back to the MSDOS and even Linux and Unix through gzip. The issue is actually at the OS level and the 32-bit filesystem. The driver was originally written for 32-bit format, and today we've moved beyond that. Microsoft even mentioned that in the link I posted. It's only recently that Winzip and the others have finally updated to handle 4GB and larger files with the new Zip64 format.

To tell you the truth, I find it annoying the way that N3V handles the archives. To me an archive removes the data from the program. In Content Manager, the content will still be listed unless you remove the archive from the program and delete the contents in Content Manager. You can do the same thing using a CDP file right away without having to go through the menu and removing the archive from the settings. With a CDP you create the file, and when it's done delete the content in CM. Done. End of story. The only advantage of the archive is that it collects everything that pertains to a route or some other dependency-driven asset. Why couldn't this be included in a normal CDP save instead? You'd think that an archive would be smaller than a standard CDP, but it's not. These files are the same size as a regular CDP file.

John