Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) (10/14/89)
One joy that a user-enthusiast has when receiving new
software is the observation of the evolving improvement of
already great packages.
I've already stated that Double Click's DC Squish is the
greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, add butter and milk to
the sliced bread, which was formerly dry before. DC Squish just
gets better and better! DC Squish has now been improved upon in
a quiet but major way.
We have talked about DC Squish and the PD/Shareware (???)
Packer before on this net. Packer, when it did work, generally
bested DC Squish in file compression. DC Squish, on the other
hand, was much more user friendly and a whole lot of fun to use.
The new DC Squish is just as friendly, just as dependable,
and more important, compresses files tighter than it formerly
did. Easily, it approaches and outdoes Packer. Briefly the following
list sums up the improvements and added options:
1. More compression.
2. Faster execution speed.
3. Automatic conversion from old DC Squish to new -- painless!
3. User options for widcarding and keeping original file names.
4. Automatic multiple file compression (user's choice).
Commands engaging the new features are easy and everything
is just, well, friendly.
Below is a brief list of file sizes for three programs.
Many cheers for DoubleClick. They treat us well. Please BUY
their products, folks. I want more utilities from these guys!!!
I've a feeling that this is just a taste of good things to come.
PROGRAM ORIGINAL SIZE OLD SQUISH NEW SQUISH
----------------------------------------------------------------
Flash 1.60 137.492 K 106.222 K 97.220 K
Turbo 1.60 52.587 K 26.858 K 23.412 K
WordPerfect (Aug 89) 204.280 K 161.726 K 151.632 K
----------------------------------------------------------------
[Nope, I don't work for these fine folks. I'm just a very happy
buying customer.]
Larry Rymal: |East Texas Atari 68NNNers| <Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET>rwa@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Ross Alexander) (10/18/89)
Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) writes: > One joy that a user-enthusiast has when receiving new >software is the observation of the evolving improvement of >already great packages. [ much lyrical exposition ommitted ] >PROGRAM ORIGINAL SIZE OLD SQUISH NEW SQUISH >Turbo 1.60 52.587 K 26.858 K 23.412 K >Flash 1.60 137.492 K 106.222 K 97.220 K >WordPerfect (Aug 89) 204.280 K 161.726 K 151.632 K Ok, let's assume wordperfect is a pretty average binary file. If anyone knows otherwise, please fill me (and the net) in. I observe from the numbers given that it compresses ( 1 - ( 151632 / 204280 ) ) % or about 26%. The other examples range from ~ 29% to 56%. I am suspicious of the 55% value, but what the hay. I say this because I notice that as the files get bigger, performance drops off. This is counter-intuitive, to say the least... Anyway, I just tried compressing GNU emacs - original 991232 bytes, compressed image 492357 bytes. Compression = ( 1 - ( 492357 / 991232 ) ) %, or about 51%. This was done with the freeware version of 16-bit LZW compress (the same compress that comes as part of GNU) running on my 1040. I think emacs is as typical a binary as exists. (What that says about me is left as an excercise for the reader ;-). Or /usr/local/bin/vnews, ~200K, compresses about 39% (this is done on a BSD box that's handy, but its exactly the same code on both machines). Both of these binaries are 'pretty average', I'd say. Big, but average. Notice big files work better, not worse. Now compress is unfriendly, and cryptic, and free, and it's been around a long time, and everybody has one on their crufty old unix box, and the DOS guys have a version, and we ST guys have a version, and the minix-ST people have a version, and they all interoperate, and you can get the source code for free from damn near anybody. I can speak personally for the unix, st, and minix people, since I'm one of each. And I have one of each :-). Whereas DC Squish works I-know-not-how (and it clearly changes with the phase of the moon), and if they've got DOS or unix or minix versions you don't mention it, and I expect the source is proprietary as all heck, and they sell binaries for money. That's private enterprise, which I support. Wholeheartedly. But from your numbers, compress easily matches DC-squish on performance, and creams it on almost every other metric I can think of (except user interface: honestly, compress doesn't have one). Us old-timers, we're hard to impress. BTW, there are some clever techniques out there - fractional huffman encoding comes to mind - that can beat Lempel-Ziv-Walsh encoding (the "LZW" above). Sorry to rain on your parade, but "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts". Ross ps: anyone want a copy of compress? I'm suprised it hasn't come by again on comp.binaries.atari.st - the program is _small_, about 32k. Steven Grimm, you out there ? r
roland@cochise (10/27/89)
rwa@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Ross Alexander) writes: >Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) writes: >> One joy that a user-enthusiast has when receiving new >>software is the observation of the evolving improvement of >>already great packages. > [ much lyrical exposition ommitted ] >>PROGRAM ORIGINAL SIZE OLD SQUISH NEW SQUISH >But from your numbers, compress easily matches DC-squish on >performance, and creams it on almost every other metric I can think of >Sorry to rain on your parade, but "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts". Sorry, but you are missing the essential point: those above programs are creating self-unpacking loadable files, and the unpacking algorithm has to ( and can ! ) compete speedwise with HD read times! Compress is a much simpler program ( yet still recommendable for archiving )