Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!whirt
From: whirt@cup.portal.com (William Bill Hirt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Archiving programs
Message-ID: <23071@cup.portal.com>
Date: 14 Oct 89 01:17:55 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 53

In message <12417@polya.Stanford.EDU> Tomas G. Rokicki
<rokicki@Polya.Stanford.EDU> writes:

>There has been a lot of discussion about new archiving programs for the
>Amiga.  I believe this is one area, though, that standards should
>dominate performance.  Zoo is the most popular archiving program used
>on the Amiga, and most people have it and know how to use it.  Using
>another archiver on programs you intend to distribute just reduces the
>number of people who can use your code.

As a BBS sysop for the past year and a half, I certainly disagree with
the above conclusion. This maybe true in the Usenet community, but in the
BBS world, ARC is certainly the more common of the archivers used. I have
over 1700 files on my board, and I'm sure the number of ARC files outnumber
the ZOO's by at least 3 to 1. I would say most non_Usenet Amiga users
know better how to use ARC than ZOO.

>For all of its problems, zoo has the following advantages:
>   - Works on a variety of machines, including Unix
>   - Compresses reasonably well
>   - Most BBSs and BIX can verify/list a zoo file
>   - Widely used, so that almost everyone already has it

ZOO appears to pack about as efficiently as ARC. I've unpacked ZOO files
and then re-packed them using LHarc and reduced the size of 140K Zoo
archive to about 100K LHarc archive. When I paying to download from a
commercial service or I have a long distance user calling the BBS to
download a file, it is appreciated to have the file packed as small as
possible. Many sysops are now asking their users to upload their files
only in LHarc format. LHarc for the Amiga can handle long filenames just
like Amiga ZOO.

As a Fidonet node, I run my board on PC-AT clone. I recently switched to
having my nightly Amiga echomail sent to me in ZIP format rather than ARC.
The first day I received it, the ZIP packet came in at 101K and by the time
my system had prepared an ARC packet for re-transmission to another Fido
node, the same number messages were only compressed to 182K by ARC. I saved
half the transmission time by using an archiver more efficient than ARC/ZOO.


>So, use what you want to on your own machine, but when you send someone
>a file, or make it publically available, keep this in mind.

ZIP has taken the IBM world by storm and once it comes to the Amiga, I
expect to do the same across all the BBS's. When it comes down to saving
disk space and paying telecommunications costs out of one's pocket, the
most efficient archiver will come out on top.

>-tom

Bill
Sysop
Amiga Central BBS 1200/2400 (816) 587-5360 Fidonet (1:280/304)