title: Decompression and extraction of files from streaming archive on the fly
body: <p>I'm writing a browser plugin, similiar to Flash and Java in that it starts downloading a file (.jar or .swf) as soon as it gets displayed. Java waits (I believe) until the entire jar files is loaded, but Flash does not. I want the same ability, but with a compressed archive file. I would like to access files in the archive as soon as the bytes necessary for their decompression are downloaded.</p>
  
  <p>For example I'm downloading the archive into a memory buffer, and as soon as the first file is possible to decompress, I want to be able to decompress it (also to a memory buffer).</p>
  
  <p>Are there any formats/libraries that support this?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> If possible, I'd prefer a single file format instead of separate ones for compression and archiving, like gz/bzip2 and tar.</p>