Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!attctc!chasm
From: chasm@attctc.DALLAS.TX.US (Charles Marslett)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: It doesn't matter which (ZOO/ARC), just try to be sensible!
Summary: Fie on the D**M subdirectories and long file names
Message-ID: <8588@attctc.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 9 Jul 89 00:09:15 GMT
References: <8906292158.AA01546@jade.berkeley.edu> <576@kullmar.se> <3306@titan.camcon.co.uk>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 27

In article <3306@titan.camcon.co.uk>, igp@camcon.co.uk (Ian Phillipps) writes:
> About the only advantage of ZOO for news postings over the best of the
> PAK/ARC programs is its ability to deal with subdirectories.  It has
> other advantages in general use, but PKPAK is faster.

These advantages really cause more trouble than they are worth:  one
recent posting (ZOO format) has five different documentation fils that
differed only in the characters after the third one following the period
(that meant I had to extract it 5 (FIVE!!) times before I got all the
text and documentation in a readable form.  If you have to use names that
are not reasonably portable (sorry you Amiga and BSD fans) please try to
make them truncate to unique 6-character base and 3-character extension
fields (I think that covers everything from C64 DOS up).

I also remember giving up once, because the file name was impossible to
extract under MSDOS -- I wish I couldremember what the prblem was here.

> -- 
> UUCP:  igp@camcon.co.uk   | Cambridge Consultants Ltd  |  Ian Phillipps
> or:    igp@camcon.uucp    | Science Park, Milton Road  |-----------------
> Phone: +44 223 420024     | Cambridge CB4 4DW, England |

===========================================================================
Charles Marslett
STB Systems, Inc.  <== Apply all standard disclaimers
Wordmark Systems   <== No disclaimers required -- that's just me
chasm@attctc.dallas.tx.us