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What I'm asking about - is how to work with this tars without built in editors
You really can't.
The built in editor does two things,
1) it handles the Tape Archive format, managing the files in the .tar
2) it handles the Unix vs PC vs Mac formatting of the line endings
If you edit on a PC, then try to insert into a .tar without formatting for Unix, you will end up with <CR><LF> endings, which Unix does not like.
The suggestion here, was that there is no easy way. You need to develop your own rhythm, and work with that.
I use Edit Plus on the PC to edit files. I install the tar file, and then edit the plugin_name.pm file, any .cgi files, or templates, by using FTP + Edit Plus, then copying the new version over the old version in the plugin editor and saving to the tar. You would use the Fileman editor to do that. Once you make changes, you would save local copies of the changed files to your PC, then uninstall the plugin. You would go to the plugin editor and edit each of the changed files, and cut/paste in the new file you edited (select-all, paste). Then, reinstall the plugin, and start the process over.
There is no *easy* way.
There is a lot of stuff going on in all that, and you need to take it all into account.
Alex may be able to build editing .tar files into a future release of Fileman, but the plugin-editor does a *lot* more than just edit tar files. It does syntax checking, format checking, and a bunch of other stuff that makes editing files (or cutting/pasting in the new version) via that editor a necessity for development. This is something a generic version of Fileman could not do, since that depends on having Links SQL and the plugin engine installed.
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