rwa@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Ross Alexander) (10/19/89)
I've gotten a lot of mail about my response to Larry Rymal's note (<891013.16005173.072949@SFA.CP6> from Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET). Whew! So now I know what DC squish exists for. OK, I fell into the trap of only reading one posting before posting a reply. A moderately critical one, too. But go back and read the original article yourselves - Larry doesn't say anywhere that DC squish exists to create self unpacking compressed executables. I guess I was just sorta supposed to guess that, or read his mind, or know it already, or something 1/2 :-). But he did talk a lot about the compression ratios and the interface. There's a table of before-and-after sizes, and so on. So I thought, "Hey, this thing is a compression utility. Let's compare it to the old standby." And as a compression utility, the performance is in my opinion not worthy of Major Wow Reviews. If it's not a compression utility, then of course comparision to a compression utility is meaningless. I'll let each of you make your own decision on that point. So as something to make living on floppy-based systems bearable, I completely agree that DC Squish sounds like a winner. I guess I'm out of touch (been a _long_ time since I tried to do anything on a flop based system - at least seven years, I think). So no more mail on this subject please. The offer of compress stands. Ross