rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) (10/13/89)
There has been a lot of discussion about new archiving programs for the Amiga. I believe this is one area, though, that standards should dominate performance. Zoo is the most popular archiving program used on the Amiga, and most people have it and know how to use it. Using another archiver on programs you intend to distribute just reduces the number of people who can use your code. For all of its problems, zoo has the following advantages: - Works on a variety of machines, including Unix - Compresses reasonably well - Most BBSs and BIX can verify/list a zoo file - Widely used, so that almost everyone already has it So, use what you want to on your own machine, but when you send someone a file, or make it publically available, keep this in mind. -tom
whirt@cup.portal.com (William Bill Hirt) (10/14/89)
In message <12417@polya.Stanford.EDU> Tomas G. Rokicki <rokicki@Polya.Stanford.EDU> writes: >There has been a lot of discussion about new archiving programs for the >Amiga. I believe this is one area, though, that standards should >dominate performance. Zoo is the most popular archiving program used >on the Amiga, and most people have it and know how to use it. Using >another archiver on programs you intend to distribute just reduces the >number of people who can use your code. As a BBS sysop for the past year and a half, I certainly disagree with the above conclusion. This maybe true in the Usenet community, but in the BBS world, ARC is certainly the more common of the archivers used. I have over 1700 files on my board, and I'm sure the number of ARC files outnumber the ZOO's by at least 3 to 1. I would say most non_Usenet Amiga users know better how to use ARC than ZOO. >For all of its problems, zoo has the following advantages: > - Works on a variety of machines, including Unix > - Compresses reasonably well > - Most BBSs and BIX can verify/list a zoo file > - Widely used, so that almost everyone already has it ZOO appears to pack about as efficiently as ARC. I've unpacked ZOO files and then re-packed them using LHarc and reduced the size of 140K Zoo archive to about 100K LHarc archive. When I paying to download from a commercial service or I have a long distance user calling the BBS to download a file, it is appreciated to have the file packed as small as possible. Many sysops are now asking their users to upload their files only in LHarc format. LHarc for the Amiga can handle long filenames just like Amiga ZOO. As a Fidonet node, I run my board on PC-AT clone. I recently switched to having my nightly Amiga echomail sent to me in ZIP format rather than ARC. The first day I received it, the ZIP packet came in at 101K and by the time my system had prepared an ARC packet for re-transmission to another Fido node, the same number messages were only compressed to 182K by ARC. I saved half the transmission time by using an archiver more efficient than ARC/ZOO. >So, use what you want to on your own machine, but when you send someone >a file, or make it publically available, keep this in mind. ZIP has taken the IBM world by storm and once it comes to the Amiga, I expect to do the same across all the BBS's. When it comes down to saving disk space and paying telecommunications costs out of one's pocket, the most efficient archiver will come out on top. >-tom Bill Sysop Amiga Central BBS 1200/2400 (816) 587-5360 Fidonet (1:280/304)
karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) (10/15/89)
In message <12417@polya.Stanford.EDU> Tomas G. Rokicki > ... Zoo ... In article <23071@cup.portal.com> whirt@cup.portal.com (William Bill Hirt) writes: >As a BBS sysop for the past year and a half, I certainly disagree with >the above conclusion. This maybe true in the Usenet community, but in the >BBS world, ARC is certainly the more common of the archivers used. I have >over 1700 files on my board, and I'm sure the number of ARC files outnumber >the ZOO's by at least 3 to 1. I would say most non_Usenet Amiga users >know better how to use ARC than ZOO. Yes, but most of those files are for the PC, aren't they? The fact is that ARC is pretty brain-damaged on the Amiga, like filenames are restricted to DOS-style, whatever that is, like eight characters plus an extension. I have seen Amiga distributions with icky command files ARCed along with the program's files to rename stuff back to the friendlier, longer, Amiga-style names. (Sure, you could restrict filenames to match, but those restriction suck, plus it only applies for the people who you can convince to do that.) We are zooing all the Amiga stuff on our BBS. We like that because we can unshar, uudecode, etc, on Unix, the zoo the stuff up on Unix, then Amiga guys (for example) can download and unzoo. Although this could all be done with ARC as there is a Unix version of ARC, the previously mentioned naming restrictions ARC imposes changes the sysop's archive creation process from a nearly totally automatic "zoo -update /usr/bbs/files/amiga/package *" into a manual process of consing up scripts to change the names around. -- -- uunet!sugar!karl "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that -- flags do not wave in a vacuum." -- Arthur C. Clarke -- Usenet access: (713) 438-5018
plouff@levers.enet.dec.com (10/16/89)
In article <23071@cup.portal.com>, whirt@cup.portal.com (William Bill Hirt) writes... > >ZOO appears to pack about as efficiently as ARC. I've unpacked ZOO files >and then re-packed them using LHarc and reduced the size of 140K Zoo >archive to about 100K LHarc archive. When I paying to download from a >commercial service or I have a long distance user calling the BBS to >download a file, it is appreciated to have the file packed as small as >possible. Many sysops are now asking their users to upload their files >only in LHarc format. LHarc for the Amiga can handle long filenames just >like Amiga ZOO. and... >ZIP has taken the IBM world by storm and once it comes to the Amiga, I >expect to do the same across all the BBS's. When it comes down to saving >disk space and paying telecommunications costs out of one's pocket, the >most efficient archiver will come out on top. Well, if I understand the situation, ZIP had its origins in the fallout from the legal dispute between PKware and SEA, where the former's ARCclone lost to the latter's original. So at least some of ZIP's appeal is reaction to SEA's heavy-handedness. But other postings in this thread have said that ZIP's packing efficiency is only modestly better than ZOO's. On a different note, why not adapt LHARC's hybrid Huffman/Lempel-Ziv packing algorithm to ZOO? A one-file-at-a-time equivalent to LHARC was published with source this spring in comp.binaries.ibm.pc. Perhaps the moderator, Rahul Dhesi, could encourage the author of ZOO, Rahul Dhesi, to do so. :-) Wes Plouff -- Wes Plouff, Digital Equipment Corp, Littleton, Mass. plouff%levers.enet.dec@decwrl.dec.com Networking bibliography: _Islands in the Net_, by Bruce Sterling _The Matrix_, Digital Press, forthcoming
jemmrich@carroll1.cc.edu (John Emmrich) (12/06/89)
A couple of weeks ago, someone posted a list of all the archiving programs and their ending letter(s). I seem to have deleted mine. Would someone please email me a copy. Thanx. *-------------------------------------------------------------* * An IBM? * John * * Who would want one? * Emmrich * *-------------------------------------------------------------*
jemmrich@carroll1.cc.edu (John Emmrich) (12/10/89)
Once again, I'll post my requets. A few weeks ago, someone posted a list of all the archiving programs. It included the suffix added and what program to de-archive it. Would someone please repost this. I have a few requests from people asking for the answer i got, which was none. How about it? Thanx.