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The
programmers behind PKARC, DWC and ZOO talked shop with some of the beta-
testers and users of these file compression/archival utilities. The text
was captured on June 30th, 1987. ]
We really shouldn't call it the ARC disk, I suppose. It contains all sorts of
goodies. Including FAKEY (allows automating program responses in a batch
file), TASK (asks a yes or no question, with a time limit), CHMOD (our own
version, lets you be selective), and several other items.
The same technique prevents Zoo 1.00 from being confused by attached comments
-- it knows to ignore certain fields that are used for maintaining comments.
Rahul, good to talk to you here... You say no other archiver has upward
compatible file format... Well, mine almost has all that you mention... Now,
I'll just have to finish it off... That's why my current release is a
prototype... when version 1.00 comes out, there will be no more incompatible
changes unless absolutely nessesary...
Dean
I note your use of interesting phrases such as "be-all and end-all", "this or
that", "academic environment", etc. The one thing you have absolutely failed
to do is refute even a single one of my claims. What my background is or yours
is utterly irrelevant to this discussion.
And a side comment and observation: One cannot plan for every eventuality, no
matter how hard one tries. It's easy for you to state now that ZOO will
always be backwards compatible. You may find it less easy at some future
date.
PLEASE NOTE the use of the word "may" in the previous sentence. Perhaps you
have indeed so fully allowed for every eventuality that you will never have to
face the difficult choice of adding something at the cost of backwards
compatibility. For your sake, I hope you have, as it is a painful choice to
have to make (as I know full well).
Here's another problem I hope you never face: We released the sources for
ARC, as you released the sources for ZOO. We now have a problem in that
someone else entirely has written an "ARC clone" that incorporates a change
which is not backwards compatible. So you see, one doesn't always have much
control over these things. I hope you never have to decide what to do in that
sort of situation.
I would certainly like to run your program and at this point, I think someone
should get on an article doing a comparison of compressions for Byte magazine!
There doesn't seem to be any money in the compression biz so it seems folks
do this to outdo themselves. It's great to see such a rush for speed and
tight code!
A TRS-80 version, simple so I could move my stuff onto my PC, makes for a
personal very practical program.
Good luck with it!
Or Thom may keep ARC the way it is, and let it stagnate.
I would, however, hasten to qualify for others that these are JUST speed and
archive filesize comparisons for IBM machines. Depending on one's needs, they
may or may not be definitive of the "best archiver". For instance, if one
needs an archiver to send compressed text files to other types of machines,
such as an Amiga or ST, PKARC with Squashing is inappropriate insofar as there
is no PKARC for anything but IBM computers. Only Thom's ARC and Rahul's ZOO
support other hardware. Granted, PKARC /oc will create ARC-compatible files
but since PKARC is unavailable for, say, UNIX then users will need ARC to
uncompress those files. Therefore, one would have to judge ARC against ZOO in
that environment.
Also not benchmarked are the various frills supported by each archiver, like
ARC's "run" command and ZOO's long filenames. And there are subtler
benchmarks to be considered, such as each compressor's error detection and
recovery, or the fact that a PKARC Squashed file will LOOK like a standard ARC
file but will not uncompress under SEA's ARC. That can and has created
problems (I still think Squashed PKARC files should have their own file
extension for this reason).
However, for file archiving of files that will ONLY be used on an IBM which
ONLY uses PKARC 2.0, then the results of your tests are fairly decisive.
Set 8: 130 Assorted EXE, COM, and system files in my DOS directory
# Original ARC OLD PK PK-1 PK-2 ZOO DWC-1 DWC-2
========================================================================
82184,025 1737,196 1587,990 1587,227 1587,282 1594,085 1576,540 1560,228
Shrunk - 20.46% 27.29% 27.33% 27.32% 27.01% 27.81% 28.56%