feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) (03/23/88)
I vote for Rahul for moderator of BINARIES. A moderator is badly needed and Rahul would make a great contribution as well as bring some discipline to postings. I vote against his ZOO as the archiving program for two reasons,however. 1) The SEA and PK versions of ARC are used by nearly every BBS and most other nets in the country. 2) I, as many others, have dozens of floppies devoted to archives using SEA and PK ARC. ZOO is a fine idea, but unfortunately it is not a widespread standard. I understand that SEA's ARC has been ported to Unix and PK's ARC can turn off "squashing", so why not use ARC? After all, except to look at the documentation, the code is not useful on most Unix systems. Futhermore, there are probably many people on this net who don't even operate under Unix. Besides, the moderator should include in the posting a description of the program, what it is used for, and any special requirements (EGA, VGA, MS windows, utility to 123, etc.) With this information we can decide whether to download. Unix SHAR has been mentioned as a means for handling the documentation tasks in program postings, and some have entered the objection that PC's could not manage this. There are PC versions of unshar (I would be happy to email my copy if anyone needs it). Forrest Gehrke
iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Tim Iverson) (03/24/88)
In article <23699@clyde.ATT.COM> feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) writes: > >I vote for Rahul for moderator of BINARIES. > >I vote against his ZOO as the archiving program for two reasons,however. > >1) The SEA and PK versions of ARC are used by nearly every BBS and >most other nets in the country. 2) I, as many others, have dozens of >floppies devoted to archives using SEA and PK ARC. Frankly, I don't see how this bears on the issue at hand: the choosing of an archiver to be used as a standard in comp.binaries.ibm.pc. The fact is that the great majority of people read news on machines for which zoo would be vastly superior to any form of arc. We are not talking about forming a standard for BBS's (whom we don't care about anyway), we are talking about forming a standard for *this* newsgroup. >ZOO is a fine idea, but unfortunately it is not a widespread standard. Again, so what? Were not talking about everywhere, just here. I see no reason to allow people to whom this means nothing influence my decision on this issue. >I understand that SEA's ARC has been ported to Unix and PK's ARC can >turn off "squashing", so why not use ARC? You say it all in the next line: >Futhermore, there are probably many people on this net who don't >even operate under Unix. Yes. Zoo is much, much more portable than arc. This is the reason it should be the standard we choose. >Besides, the moderator should include in the posting a description >of the program, what it is used for, and any special requirements >(EGA, VGA, MS windows, utility to 123, etc.) With this information we >can decide whether to download. Really? I almost invariably read the man page and readme files of a posting to comp.sources.unix before grabbing the goods. Rich Salz does a good job, but no moderator has the time to describe a package in as great a detail as the author. The same would be the case here. >Forrest Gehrke - Tim Iverson iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU ucbvax!cory!iverson
frotz@drivax.UUCP (Frotz) (03/25/88)
In article <23699@clyde.ATT.COM> feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) writes: >I vote for Rahul for moderator of BINARIES. A moderator is >badly needed and Rahul would make a great contribution as well >as bring some discipline to postings. Ok, email to your vote to bill davidsen (I think), as this one doesn't count. >ZOO is a fine idea, but unfortunately it is not a widespread >standard. I understand that SEA's ARC has been ported to Unix and >PK's ARC can turn off "squashing", so why not use ARC? After all, >except to look at the documentation, the code is not useful on most >Unix systems. Futhermore, there are probably many people on this net >who don't even operate under Unix. It is not nice to force a directory structure upon *ARC. In fact, it is a real pain (try archiving of each subdirectory into its parent and then including that archive along with the rest of the files in the parent directory in an archive). In the ZOO on the other hand allows a (novice) command syntax that is really quite close to *ARCs, but the (expert) command syntax is much more complete. There are several operating systems that currently support ZOO: DOS, VMS, *nix, FlexOS, AmigaDos, ConcurrentDOS are the ones that I know about. >Besides, the moderator should include in the posting a description >of the program, what it is used for, and any special requirements >(EGA, VGA, MS windows, utility to 123, etc.) With this information we >can decide whether to download. Let me interpret what I think you mean here. You mean that the moderator should *REQUIRE* postings to contain a short description of the program and any special hardware/software requirements it may have, so that the moderator may slightly (if at all) modify the description, add his own blurb and headers and post to the net. I agree whole-heartedly. It is the main responsibility of posters to supply this information; not the moderators. Frotz ============================================================= Digital Research, Incorporated amdahl!drivax!frotz 70 Garden Court, B28 (408) 649-3896 Monterey, California 93940 Ask for John Fa'atuai =============================================================
davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) (03/25/88)
In article <23699@clyde.ATT.COM> feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) writes: | [...] | I vote against his ZOO as the archiving program for two reasons,however. pkarc runs *only* on DOS. Phil has mentioned a UNIX version, but as yet it hasn't seen the light of day. zoo runs on DOS, UNIX, VMS, Amiga, VM/CMS, etc. Is is useful to more people on more systems. Actually I will be happy if we just stop using PKARC format. Either arc or zoo are probably acceptable formats. The other advantage of zoo is that it's 4-10 times faster than arc, has comments on the files and on the archive, and has a listing option which produces records suitable for database use (if you have a lot of files as I do). -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
mdella@polyslo.UUCP (Marcos R. Della) (03/29/88)
In article <1805@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Tim Iverson) writes: >In article <23699@clyde.ATT.COM> feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) writes: >> >>I vote against his ZOO as the archiving program for two reasons,however. >> >>1) The SEA and PK versions of ARC are used by nearly every BBS and >>most other nets in the country. 2) I, as many others, have dozens of >>floppies devoted to archives using SEA and PK ARC. > >Frankly, I don't see how this bears on the issue at hand: the choosing of an >archiver to be used as a standard in comp.binaries.ibm.pc. The fact is that >the great majority of people read news on machines for which zoo would be >vastly superior to any form of arc. We are not talking about forming a >standard for BBS's (whom we don't care about anyway), we are talking about >forming a standard for *this* newsgroup. > Well, I just got through posting a rather large program on the net a few weeks ago and did not have anything even remotely similiar to zoo available, nor do I have the resources on this machine to put together a copy. My account (as well as every other student) is limited to 500k online at any one time. The system that I base myself out of (caus-dp) I have 3 gigibytes of storage, but don't have the msdos intereface. The reason for using pkarc (probably goes for most of the people out there) is because its on the IBM (I don't have zoo nor have heard of anyone that does yet although pkarc and arc are WIDE spread) and its easier to put the files together on the PC than on the unix machine, especially when you only have 500k to play with at a time and MOST of it is taken up with school projects. I've tried transporting it to my machine at work (I'm the sysadmin for allanon, caus-dp, caus-pc, and shannara) but the time and effort involved are too much when there is an easier way of sending it over the net in the pk-form. I will admit that I should have turned off squashing, but I didn't think of that... ANYWAY... In summary, very few people that I have talked to have a copy of zoo on their machines nor do they have the sysadmins ear to get them to put something together for them... Its not like people aren't trying, its just that other people's schedules are so packed that something like that is low on the priorities... Marcos Della -- ..!csustan ->!polyslo!mdella | mdella@polyslo | Whatever I said doesn't ..!sdsu ---/ Marcos R. Della | (805) 543-0135 | mean diddly as I forgot ..!csun --/ 225 N. Chorro St / it even before finishing ..!dmsd -/ San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 / typing it all out!!! :-)
jvc@prism.TMC.COM (04/07/88)
/* Written 2:55 pm Apr 3, 1988 by tlhingan@unsvax.UUCP */ >... >Personal Note: I cannot stand pkarc. I prefer ARC's one (1) program >that does the job just as well. I don't like invoking different >commands to 'v' an archive and 'e' an archive. There is no reason to -- the "v" option is available in both pkxarc and pkarc. To view the archive before extracting use pkxarc -v archive. To extract files use pkxarc -e archive [file ...]. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Champeaux jvc@mirror.TMC.COM {mit-eddie, ihnp4, wjh12, cca, cbosgd, seismo}!mirror!jvc Mirror Systems, 2067 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140 Telephone: (617) 661-0777