Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: WANTED: News compression information...
Message-ID: <3420@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 2 Jun 90 17:54:26 GMT
References: <861@sppy00.UUCP> <3411@auspex.auspex.com> <1990Jun01.143729.12368@groucho>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 27

>>Uhh, the compression algorithm that "sendbatch" uses *is* "compress":

...

>>and "/usr/lib/news/compress" is simply a symlink to "/usr/ucb/compress"
>>on our system.  There is a variant of "compress" supplied in source form
>>with the netnews source, but it's basically the same program as the one
>>that comes with, say, BSD.
>
>Your right but wrong.  The compress program used adaptive Lempel-Ziv 
>coding.

Uhh, did I say it didn't?  I just pointed out something that the
original poster seemed not to know, namely that netnews used "compress"
itself to compress batches.

>Also /usr/lib/news/compress is only a symlink to /usr/ucp/compress on
>Berkely systems.

I *did* say "on our system" (which I guess you could call a "Berkeley
system"; it's SunOS, which while it resembles BSD in a number of ways,
is not BSD), and *did* point out that a variant of the "compress"
program was supplied in source form for systems that don't have
"compress". 

Of course, the Makefile for netnews may need to be modified if System V
Release 4 puts "compress" in "/usr/bin", as I expect it does....