Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!motcsd!mcdcup!mcdchg!ddsw1!corpane!sparks
From: sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Compressed archive format
Message-ID: <2781@corpane.UUCP>
Date: 27 Aug 90 21:52:44 GMT
References: <1990Aug25.180851.4401@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <90237.220415JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu>
Organization: Corpane Industries Inc., Louisville, KY
Lines: 44

JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT) writes:

>>Could some kind soul 1) do a good set of benchmarks to see which is
>>the most time/space efficient of the new archivers, and publish it
>>here; 2) find and distribute the widely ported source code for the
>>host executable; 3) find and distribute the source code and executables
>>for the Amiga versions; and, most important, 4) pick _one_ new
>>archiver/format we can all agree upon?

>No need to duplicate the effort of doing benchmarks and publishing
>the results.... Look at the August 1990 issue of AmigaWorld, page 46.
>There's an entire article comparing ARC, ZOO, LHARC, and PKAZIP.

other points besides speed are cost and usability. 
Zoo and Lharc are freeware but
PKAZIP is shareware. Remember the big stink about PKAZIP a while back
with Phil Katz saying he wasn't going to revise amiga PKAZIP because no
one was registering it? Also, it is only workbench runable. It takes up
a full window and can't be ran from a command line (i.e. Pkazip -x file
won't work). 

Lharc seems speed comparable with Zoo, maybe a bit slower at packing.
But it packs quite a bit smaller. I also have versions of Lharc that
run under MSDOS and Unix.

LHW is Lharc Warp, which is like Warp in that it packs disk tracks rather
than files. This is good for packing entire floppies, but it's disadvantage
is that there are no versions of LHW that work under unix so you can't get
an archive listing on a unix host. You have to download it to the amiga
first to find out what is in the LHW archive.

When Lharc first became available, I hesitated to use it because I was used
to Zoo and I did not have a version of Lharc for Unix (where I store all
my archives). But now that I have Lharc for Unix (it came across comp.sources
.unix a few months back) I am starting to like it. It has all of the advantages
of Zoo, but packs smaller. And judging from all of the BBS's I call, it is
fast becomming the standard in the Amiga world.


-- 
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