Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cbmvax!atha!rwa
From: rwa@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Ross Alexander)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: further to my comments on DC squish
Keywords: partial retraction
Message-ID: <1184@atha.AthabascaU.CA>
Date: 19 Oct 89 16:24:56 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 27

I've gotten a lot of mail about my response to Larry Rymal's note
(<891013.16005173.072949@SFA.CP6> from Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET).
Whew!  So now I know what DC squish exists for.

OK, I fell into the trap of only reading one posting before posting a
reply.  A moderately critical one, too.  But go back and read the
original article yourselves - Larry doesn't say anywhere that DC
squish exists to create self unpacking compressed executables.  I
guess I was just sorta supposed to guess that, or read his mind, or
know it already, or something 1/2 :-).

But he did talk a lot about the compression ratios and the interface.
There's a table of before-and-after sizes, and so on.  So I thought,
"Hey, this thing is a compression utility.  Let's compare it to the
old standby."  And as a compression utility, the performance is in my
opinion not worthy of Major Wow Reviews.  If it's not a compression
utility, then of course comparision to a compression utility is
meaningless.  I'll let each of you make your own decision on that
point.

So as something to make living on floppy-based systems bearable, I
completely agree that DC Squish sounds like a winner.  I guess I'm out
of touch (been a _long_ time since I tried to do anything on a flop
based system - at least seven years, I think). So no more mail on this
subject please.  The offer of compress stands.

	Ross