Technical note:    10012
  Created:           05/24/95 by Trip
  Last modified:     08/18/95 by Brian
  Product:           Netscape Navigator

The Netscape Navigator on Macintosh and Microsoft Windows doesn't
automatically uncompress and display ".Z" and ".gz" files.  For
example, if you compress your web pages and put ".html.gz" and
".gif.gz" files on your server, the Navigator will download those
files and open then with an uncompressor program rather than
displaying them, which is probably not want you wanted to have happen.

In other words, the Navigator deals with ".gz" and ".Z" files just
like it does with any other file it can´t handle internally -- it
downloads them and opens an external program for them, if you´ve
configured one in the Netscape preferences.  It´s just not clever
enough to notice if the uncompressed files are ".html" and ".gif" and
display them.

However, the Netscape Navigator on Xwindows *does* automatically
display compressed files properly, because all this involves on Unix
is simply adding "gunzip" or "uncompress" to the end of a pipe.