HL00@NS.CC.LEHIGH.EDU (Sheng Lin) (05/15/91)
Well, I'm no expert in archivers, but why are lots of programs still compressed with zoo when there are others which can reduced the size of the files significantly better than zoo?
jcwasik@PacBell.COM (Joe Wasik) (05/16/91)
In article <14059121:55:36HL00@lehigh.bitnet> HL00@NS.CC.LEHIGH.EDU (Sheng Lin) writes: >Well, I'm no expert in archivers, but why are lots of programs still >compressed with zoo when there are others which can reduced the size of >the files significantly better than zoo? Perhaps its because zoo is very portable to other operating systems. I use zoo because it allows me to transfer between any Unix system to any DOS system. It works very well. -- Joe Wasik, Pac*Bell, 2600 Camino Ramon, Rm 4E750V, San Ramon, CA (415)823-2422 email: jcwasik@clib.PacBell.COM or [...]!pacbell!clib!jcwasik Sloganeering (slo-gan-err-ing) v. The act of believing that people can be motivated by expressing a phrase.
davidsen@rdsunx.crd.GE.COM (William E Davidsen) (05/17/91)
In article <8927@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> you write: |> Perhaps its because zoo is very portable to other operating systems. I use |> zoo because it allows me to transfer between any Unix system to any DOS |> system. It works very well. I have been given some tentative deadlines by Rahul Dhesi for "new zoo." The Beta version should be in my hands by the end of this month, with some very serious speed problems but full compression. I will be doing both sanity checking and sharing thoughts on speedups, with a target date of July 4th for a production version. Obviously I will update the User Guide, and possibly the man page if asked to do so. Any archiver used in this group must have the following attributes: a) free b) ported to popular UNIX variants at a minimum, VMS, Amiga, etc desirable. c) usefully fast (I don't have 2-3 hours of CPU per megabyte) I have tried long and hard to convince the author of ARJ that a useful UNIX version would help rather than hinder his MS-DOS registrations, but he is unconvinced. A UNIX version, if ever released, will be seriously crippled. I have been in touch with the author of LHA (aka lharc) about a UNIX port, but the last released source I have has major portions in hand optimized assembler as output from some C compiler. LHA also lack comments, which is desirable if not absolutely required. I have been participating in info-zip to work toward a ZIP implementation. There is a good unzip package, but until recently the zip failed the speed test and even now is painfully slow. It is still pretty slow. And with PKZIP v2.0 coming out, it may produce obsolete versions as well. When the production free ZIP is out, and the production new ZOO, I will report results and consider a change. Since a change of archiver would require a lot of modification of the scripts which produce the postings, if the size of the archives is similar, or if zoo continues to be 3x faster than zip, I will be unwilling to change.
mjo@irie.ais.org (Mike O'Connor) (05/21/91)
In article <14059121:55:36HL00@lehigh.bitnet> HL00@NS.CC.LEHIGH.EDU (Sheng Lin) writes:
:Well, I'm no expert in archivers, but why are lots of programs still
:compressed with zoo when there are others which can reduced the size of
:the files significantly better than zoo?
'cause ZOO works be ARC and works on a wide variety of platforms
(various PCs, Unix, VMS, etc.) without a lot of hassle.
====
Mike O'Connor (mjo@ais.org)mjo@irie.ais.org (Mike O'Connor) (05/21/91)
In article <14059121:55:36HL00@lehigh.bitnet> HL00@NS.CC.LEHIGH.EDU (Sheng Lin) writes:
:Well, I'm no expert in archivers, but why are lots of programs still
:compressed with zoo when there are others which can reduced the size of
:the files significantly better than zoo?
Basically because ZOO is superior to ARC in file handling and
compression and works on a variety of platforms (various PCs, Unix
VMS) without a lot of hassle.
====
Mike O'Connor (mjo@ais.org)derek@sun4dts.dts.ine.philips.nl (derek) (05/23/91)
HL00@NS.CC.LEHIGH.EDU (Sheng Lin) writes: >Well, I'm no expert in archivers, but why are lots of programs still >compressed with zoo when there are others which can reduced the size of >the files significantly better than zoo? Because of the things that zoo can do, that the others cann't: Using looz xx you can run <64K programs without unpacking. I find this useful for storing small, infrequently used programs. Using multiple generations of a file (like VMS) No packing automatically - so I can compress things on a floppy- only system to a single disk and nearly fill it. I also use zoox to do backups (it can split archives over several floppies) It is the only archiver I have that works on the Sun at work, and my PCs at home. So I can compress files for transfer. Well you asked :-) Best Regards, Derek Carr DEREK@DTS.INE.PHILIPS.NL Philips I&E TQV-5 Eindhoven, The Netherlands Standard Disclaimers apply.