[sword-devel] *.conf qualifier, InstallSize

[DM Smith]

On Dec 29, 2007, at 4:03 PM, Chris Little wrote:

> Adding InstallSize doesn't really give the whole picture when it comes
> to modules like the Dore woodcuts, anyway. They take much longer to
> download than their relative size would suggest because of the many
> files they contain, rather than their size alone.


I agree, but it is better than nothing.

I think that these modules beg for a different mechanism for download.  
Troy and I have discussed this before on #sword. One basic idea was to  
send the stream compressed as a single file. When updating the code  
that computes the download statistics, I noticed in the Apache logs  
there are quite a few "failures" in sending the entire module. That is  
one can find that some parts make it while others don't. (I haven't  
looked into the Sword API code to see how it handles incomplete module  
transmission.) My contention is that sending a single file would  
improve reliability.

When we send a non-image module that is already compressed, there is a  
small gain. And that is of making the transport more reliable with a  
single file whose size is slightly smaller than the sum total of the  
parts. Uncompressed non-image modules have a greater gain. Today's  
image modules are such that it really doesn't matter that the module  
is compressed or not. The images are already compressed and the text  
size is small in comparison to the overall module size. But I think,  
without proof, that it would be a performance boost to download a  
single file, whether compressed or not.

I started to look into adding the ability to download the zip files,  
but the zip code already did not support a zip with more than one file  
(i.e. it did not handle the zip table of contents or zip entries). It  
does handle tar.gz files quite well.