Remove zoo related tools

[fingolfin]

The website mostly doesn't mention the zoo format anymore; most young people won't even know what it is. And I don't think anybody uses it.

[frankluebeck]

I agree that the zoo-format is no longer needed for the distribution.

I didn't follow in detail how these scripts (which I wrote quite a few years ago) were changed over time. But originally I used the zoo-format archive as master archive which contained the information about which files are text and which are binary. For UNIX this is not relevant, but maybe still for Windows zip-files?
If yes, be careful that you don't throw away useful information by this change.

[olexandr-konovalov]

Please be careful - we still provide for download GAP 3.4.4 archives in zoo format: http://www.gap-system.org/Gap3/Download3/download.html

[dimpase]

it would be good to move zoo to GAP3 section of the GAP website...

[fingolfin]

@frankluebeck I carefully verified before making this pull request that nothing inside the gap and gap-distribution code uses the zoo tool. You are right about the zoo format being historically used for detecting text files, and the function TextFilesInZooArchive still exists, but the code calling it is commented out.

@alex-konovalov @dimpase Did you actually look at the download page? :-) Because it already provides the unzoo tool. So, I don't think we have to bundle it with GAP4

[olexandr-konovalov]

@fingolfin fine w/me then. I didn't scroll long enough :)

@frankluebeck BTW, the same page says that you "created an executable of the currently released version of GAP 3.4.4 for Linux on i686 machines" but the link to http://www.math.rwth-aachen.de:8001/~Frank.Luebeck/gap/GAP3/ does not work.

The text/binary classification is done by tools from gap-distribution repository so there is no risk of making a harm to those. I've looked at all suggested changes - happy for them to be merged.

[dimpase]

On 28 January 2016 at 10:33, Max Horn notifications@github.com wrote:

@frankluebeck https://github.com/frankluebeck I carefully verified
before making this pull request that nothing inside the gap and
gap-distribution code uses the zoo tool. You are right about the zoo
format being historically used for detecting text files, and the function
TextFilesInZooArchive still exists, but the code calling it is commented
out.

@alex-konovalov https://github.com/alex-konovalov @dimpase
https://github.com/dimpase Did you actually look at the download page?
:-) Because it already provides the unzoo tool. So, I don't think we have
to bundle it with GAP4

now I am looking; e.g. this one
http://www.gap-system.org/Gap3/Download3/readzoo.html
with Netscape screenshot...
And the one where "Binaries for 68k MACs" are mentioned.

IMHO it's safe to keep the source only. Chances that these binaries work
anywhere are approaching 0...

[fingolfin]

Well, actually many modern day "swiss army knife" decompressing tools actually still support .zoo -- E.g. I am on Mac OS X and am using the free tool "The Unarchiver". I just downloaded one of GAP 3.4 .zoo files, and was able to extract it by simply double clicking it. Debian has a zoo package. The unzoo and zoo sources can also be found via the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_%28file_format%29

All in all, I am not worried :)

[frankluebeck]

Yes, it is still no problem to uncompress zoo-files. The version of unzoo on the GAP web pages was a hacked version that knew about the !TEXT! comments (again, only really relevant for non-UNIX systems).

@alex-konovalov: please, change the link you mention above to
http://www.math.rwth-aachen.de/~Frank.Luebeck/gap/GAP3/

[olexandr-konovalov]

@frankluebeck thanks - done in gap-system/GapWWW@93e8d81. Will appear online after next pull from the repository.

[olexandr-konovalov]

I think this is ready to merge. In the unlikely event of needed anything back we can always restore it. I will let someone else press the "Merge" button just in case.