Exactly what I was trying to get at. Clients and servers would have
dynamic settings like "treat_tar_files_as_directories" true/false.
Servers could have a setting, on a per directory basis, depending on
the presence of .treat_tar_files_as_directories, like .www_browsable,
or command line switches, so that tar/tar.Z files can appear as files,
directories or both, and also as contents listings (from tar tv) so
that clients don't need to haul the whole archive over the net or
traverse the tree to see what's in it. Possibly also a line or flag in
httpd.conf, rather like the map extensions? I would incline to giving
server admins several different wasy to go about setting this, for
bulk, per dir and individual files. I dunno, Tim, you're the boss.
In essence, tar files would be treated like directory now are, with the
exception that the binary contents of the tars are of interest, whereas
the binary contents of directories aren't.
Peter