Feature / Bug: MSI Plugin Displaying Internal CABs

[djsdjs]

The MSI Plug-in currently displays the File table entries AND the .CAB files. In every other archive type, the presence of .CAB files indicates a “Compressed archive”. Those unfamiliar with MSI will not realize that everything in those CAB files is already being displayed as files at the same “level” as the cab files.

Technically by seeing the file list from the File table, you are seeing the directory of everything contained in those cabs. They just “happen” to be stored in the MSI as well.

Double-clicking a cab file results in a slow and unnecessary extraction of the CAB and then viewing it as it’s own archive.

Not only that, but as you hunt for the CAB with the right file, you have to keep doing it for each cab (The .MSI for the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) contains 5 cabs that make up it’s file set - where clicking the file in the file list will find it in the cab for you.

I propose that the CABs that are referenced by the MSI media table should not be displayed in the file list. Rather they should be viewed like the “parts of a multipart archive” that should never be in the file view.

The fact that the CABs are compressed into the MSI (they are not actually IN the File table, but MSI streams) is a side issue to viewing the “whole MSI as an achive”

I hope I am making sense - just didn’t want all the cool work of creating the file list to be lost on people directly rummaging the CABs due to that being the standard operation with all other archive types.

Thanks,
D.