tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) (07/06/88)
The following is my own personal opinion, long and strongly held, pure and simple. Take it for what it's worth. I don't know exactly why SEA sued Phil Katz and I don't care. PKARC has never had a place on my software shelf and it never will. I keep four files handy: ARC.EXE, ARCE.COM, ARCA.COM and ARCV.COM. ARC.EXE, by SEAware, is the standard. I don't use it normally but I keep it around for verification in case there's a problem with a particular archive's format or contents. If ARC.EXE won't read it, it doesn't get posted anywhere I control. The only problem with ARC.EXE it that it's slow, thanks to the porcine Computer Innovations C86 runtime library. For high speed performance, I turn to three superb, tiny support utilities from Vern Buerg and Wayne Chin. ARCV displays archive directories, ARCE extracts files (to disk or stdout) and ARCA builds new archives from component files (with optional delete afterwards). They are all small enough to put in a command cache RAMdisk if you want; they run ultrafast, reliably, and they never waste your time begging for money or trumpeting their virtues in big banners. ARCE, in particular, is ideal for handing out to people with ARC files you distribute -- it's small, the syntax is self evident, and it does just what you want. Plus there's no embarrassing panhandling for someone else's bank account to spoil the moment. :-) Basically I have never felt that the archiver niche (it doesn't deserve to be called a "market") has needed a shareware clone. The grapevine word for years was that Katz asked to see some ASM source in a "friendly" way, then dropped out of sight and emerged in a couple of months with a beg-ware lookalike. PKARC has been so assiduously hyped over the past two years that the average user these days has never heard of ARC.EXE itself, let alone the optimized Buerg/Chin companion programs. It's a damn shame. Of course, the whole "squash" incompatibility fiasco was just icing on this particular cake. I haven't got a clue as to whether there is any merit to SEA's case per se, but nothing can make Katz a hero. Use the freeware programs and pass them on. That's my advice. PS Vern's ARCE reads squashed archives OK as of version 3.1b, released last year. If anyone would like a copy let me know, although I suspect I'll be posting it to c.b.i.pc soon anyway. -- Tom Neff UUCP: ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff "None of your toys CIS: 76556,2536 MCI: TNEFF will function..." GEnie: TOMNEFF BIX: t.neff (no kidding)
pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) (07/07/88)
Have Buerg/Chin released source code that can be ported to UNIX???
bill@iccdev.UUCP (Bill Gaines) (07/09/88)
In article <5346@dasys1.UUCP> tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes: > >The only problem with ARC.EXE it that it's slow, thanks to the porcine >Computer Innovations C86 runtime library. For high speed performance, >I turn to three superb, tiny support utilities from Vern Buerg and >Wayne Chin. > I may have missed something here, but what is the difference between Vern Buerg's ARCE, ARCV, and ARCA? I know he doesn't sell these commercially, but they seem to be just like PKARC and PKXARC to me. Have these utilities been approved by SEA? Is that what the difference is? -- Bill Gaines | UUCP: ...!gatech!ncrats!iccdev!bill Industrial Computer Corporation | Compuserve: 76317,770 Atlanta, Georgia |
nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (07/10/88)
In article <5346@dasys1.UUCP> tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes: >The following is my own personal opinion, long and strongly held, pure >and simple. Take it for what it's worth. Has anybody else noticed that this was republished on GENIE? I suppose that there isn't much difference between GENIE and some of the paid-access systems like cup et. al... -- Pray that Bush gets re-elected so that the Republicans will be blamed for it.