From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Archiver wars (was Re: We have reignition)
Keywords: lharc, flamefest
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 93 18:15:13 GMT


I) Concerning lharc:

I never use it for anything other than file extraction, so I don't
know all of the inter-version compatibility features.  However, as a
thought:

Most archivers allow the option of forcing the use of some particular
compression method, or the use of archives compatible with some
"older" edition.

Is lharc an exception to this rule?  If not, then why don't the people
that package up newer versions use the "compatibility" option?  It
seems only sensible: I don't care if the archive bloats by a few K, as
it only gets downloaded ONCE.  The few K of savings by using some
newer algorithm will be FAR exceeded by the cost of the fact that
people wind up having to download two or more different versions.

II) Concerning other options:

On the Atari ST, there seems to be quite the choice of archivers:
- Zoo
Roger Sheppard may hate it, but at least it has remained STABLE,
doesn't crash, and is highly compatible between a variety of
platforms.  Compression sizes are competitive, which makes up for the
fact that it's a little slow.

I consider it a GOOD thing that it hasn't changed much in a couple of
years.
  
- Lharc
There's lots of work going into maintaining/improving Lharc, but
unfortunately, it's all quite jumbled, and it's almost impossible to
guarantee that you've got a compatible version.  It's fairly fast, but
that's because it gets hacked on a lot, which makes it less
trustworthy.

- ARC 
It's occasionally needed for compatibility with OLD archives.
Unfortunately, it's fairly slow, doesn't compress nearly as well as
the competition, and the support for subdirectories is a little
spotty.

- ZIP
There has been an attempt to get ZIP running on the ST.  There's a
nice GEM-based version, which unfortunately is buggy.  (I've only once
gotten through a session with out bombs.)

If you watch the traffic around gnu.announce, and comp.compression,
there seems to be quite a bit of talk about a new "portable" edition
that's available pretty much in the public domain.

The GNU people are planning to use the ZIP algorithms as the standard
compressor for the GNU project; clearly the code is getting looked at
by many people in many places.

I could see it being an idea to try to latch onto this use of ZIP, and
try to make it into the #1 Atari archiver.  ZIP is now about as
portable as ZOO; if they get a VM/CMS version out, it will be MORE
platform independent than ANY other archiver.

Given the great popularity of ZIP in the I*M world, the fairly easy
availability in the UNIX world, as well as VMS, VM/CMS, and probably
other places I can't think of, and the fact that early versions of ZIP
have been fairly well received by Atari users, it might be worth some
of us putting effort into getting the "new" ZIP properly compiled, and
generally accepted on the Atari.  It might end the LZH/ZOO wars, at
least.

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |======================================
University of Ottawa              | Genius may have its limitations, but
Master of System Science Program  | stupidity is not thus handicapped.