Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!seismo!ukma!psuvax1!rutgers!njin!idunno!cs!nfs
From: nfs@cs.Princeton.EDU (Norbert Schlenker)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: LHARC available for MINIX!
Summary: I'm not sure this is a good idea
Keywords: lharc archive compress
Message-ID: <781@rossignol.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 3 Jul 90 01:53:04 GMT
References: <1990Jul2.143113.2267@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Sender: news@cs.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University
Lines: 35

In article <1990Jul2.143113.2267@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> wayne@csri.toronto.edu (Wayne Hayes) writes:
>...
>LHARC now available for Minix!
>
>YES!  Now you too can have a *real* compression utility on your Minix
>system.
>
>Well, OK, "real" is a subjective term.  It doesn't accept pipe input.
>However it's compression ratios are second to none.  It'll blow away
>13-bit compress AND 16-bit compress.

A month ago, I was also amazed to discover that LHARC compiled and ran
virtually unchanged under Minix.  It really is a good compressor, and
it is nice to have a combination compressor/archiver, like all those
poor DOS folks.  I have never had any luck porting ARC, ZOO, or their
ilk to PC-Minix ... they always run out of code or data space or fail
in mysterious and untraceable ways.  LHARC worked first time.  Its
compression ratios are astonishing.  It is a truly fine program for
local archives.  But there is a wee problem ...

LHARC wasn't written with portability in mind.  The archive header
format is dependent on byte order within words and on the length of
integers.  A PC archive cannot be read on an ST and vice versa,
without considerable pulling of teeth.  I started to rewrite the parts
of the code that wrote the headers (I think something like a TAR
header, perhaps tagged to reduce the space required, would be much
better) but real work got in the way.

LHARC would be a wonderful method for distributing Minix software.  The
LZHUF algorithm is a clever device and achieves much better compression
than compress does.  Andy would be less likely to dominate net bandwidth
when posting new releases.  But it's all useless if the archives can't
be read by all the platforms on which Minix runs.

Norbert