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+tpax: a topological pax implementation.
+---------------------------------------
+
+This project has the twofold aim of:
+
+a) providing a standards-compliant pax(1) implementation.
+b) providing a means for the creation of reproducible ustar archives.
+
+In order to accomplish the latter aim, tpax defines and accepts as
+a format argument the ``rustar'' (reproducible ustar) format.
+
+A reproducible ustar archive is an archive conforming to posix ustar
+interchange format specification that specially handles the uid, gid,
+uname, gname, name, and prefix fields, specifically in the following
+manner:
+
+* the `uid' and `gid' fields consist of 8 zero ('0') characters each.
+* the `gname' and `uname' fields consist of 32 null characters each.
+* the `name' and `prefix' fields are populated as follows:
+-  if a path name (not including the terminall null-character) can fit
+   in the `name' field alone (that is, when strlen(pathname) <= 100),
+   then only the `name' field shall be used.
+-  otherwise, the name field shall be used for as few directory elements
+   as possible, but not less that one directory element (namely the last
+   element, also known as the path's base name), and the `prefix' field
+   shall be used for the remainder of the path name.