From: vporguen@unlinfo.unl.edu (victor porguen)
Subject: The new Swedish Archiver
Keywords: SQZ Squeeze Archive Compression Swedish
Organization: University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 04:14:22 GMT

 
Writes Nico E. de Vries  (nevries@cc.ruu.nl) on the subject of the 
new archiver from Sweden, SQZ (Squeeze):

> This shows that indeed the meta information is smaller (looking at 
> the archive I think it has no central directory and has less meta 
> info per file). It also shows the compressor does a little bit 
> better than the rest (but with using much more time). It must have 
> some tricks not available in ZIP to achieve that.

I think it must have some tricks not available in ZIP (not difficult),

or in LZH (harder) or in ARJ (still harder).  My test results are as 
follows:

     File                   Archives   
 ------------   ----------------------------------
 COMMAND.COM     PKZIP     LHA      ARJ      SQZ
    47,845       30,144    29,210   29,032   28,724
                  37%       38%      39%      40%
                  ^^^       ^^^      ^^^      ^^^
                  
 KERMIT.EXE      PKZIP     LHA      ARJ      SQZ
   188,920       101,796   98,642   96,830   96,432
                  46%       47%      48%      49% 
                  ^^^       ^^^      ^^^      ^^^
      
 ASCII Text      PKZIP     LHA      ARJ      SQZ
    83,124       31,587    31,069   29,931   29,350
                  62%       63%      64%      64.7%
                  ^^^       ^^^      ^^^      ^^^^^
           
On a binary file, SQZ is measurably better than the others. On a 
text file, it is again measurably better than the others. In all 
cases, the difference between SQZ and the second-best archiver is of 
the same order as the difference bewteen the other two. 

If we can say that there is a significant difference between PKZIP 
and LHA (there is) and if we can say that there is a significant 
difference between LHA and ARJ (there is), we can also say that 
there is a significant difference between ARJ and SQZ!

> The product has not much to differetiate it from the rest. 

It only has superior performance, but perhaps this is not enough
nowadays...?

> Perhaps it will be succsfull in Sweden (due to the native 
> language support) but it is not good enough to chalange ZIP 
> and ARJ IMO.

Does this mean that if the author wrote his DOCs in better English,
his product would compress more efficiently..??  By such standard,
the PKWare product should be the best compressor of them all ---
which it clearly isn't.  When the Yoshitake LHarc archiver appeared,
its .DOC files were written in terrible English.  But it spread like
wildfire, didn't seem to faze too may users, and caused Katz to 
scramble to revamp his tepid production.

Things are different now. Users have become more sophisticated, have 
learned the difference between an *imposed* "standard" (PKZIP) and  
truly advanced, state-of-the-art utilities (LHA, ARJ).  More authors 
around the world are writing archivers.  All of this is good for 
computing. 

I think that treating a ground-breaking program such as SQZ with 
such "ho-hum" attitude tends to detract from this overall 
improvement.

In any case, the second version of SQZ has the DOC file written by a 
native English speaker. I wonder if this now will make it unsuitable 
for compressing archives in France.  Tsk, tsk.   :-)
 
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    Victor Porguen                                      
    SMTP/Internet: vporguen@unlinfo.unl.edu             
    UUCP: ...!unlinfo.unl.edu!vporguen                      
    Voice: (203) 847-8992  (9:00 - 17:00 EST)           
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Newsgroups: comp.compression