Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!emory!phssra
From: phssra@mathcs.emory.edu (Scott Robert Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: StuffIt Deluxe (Compactor)
Keywords: StuffIt, Compactor
Message-ID: <6271@emory.mathcs.emory.edu>
Date: 30 Aug 90 20:04:34 GMT
References: <1990Aug29.093732.7927@cs.UAlberta.CA> <1990Aug29.162542.9766@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Organization: Department of Physics, Emory University, Atlanta
Lines: 45

In article <1990Aug29.162542.9766@ccu.umanitoba.ca> umcarls9@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Charles Carlson) writes:
>In article <1990Aug29.093732.7927@cs.UAlberta.CA> userapv@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca (Antoine Verheijen) writes:
>>In article <1990Aug29.052224.24927@ccu.umanitoba.ca> umcarls9@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Charles Carlson) writes:
>>>
>>> We now have Compactor to replace StuffIt, which is shareware, and is
>>>much faster and compresses tighter than StuffIt 1.5.1 so why not
>>>switch to that instead?  Compactor also has an Uncompactor that others
>>>can use without having to pay a fee for.
>>
>>I can think of a couple of reasons not to:
>> 
>>   1) (Un)Compactor will not run on a 512KE Mac (or smaller). There are still
>>      a fair number of them around.
>> 
>
>Ok, I didn't know Compactor will not run on 512KE machines.   
>But why is that? Because of the ROMS, memory, or the need of system 6?

I have communicated with Bill Goodman on this issue, and it appears that,
amongst other things, Compactor requires more than 512K to achieve its
significant size and speed reductions.  Extractor (i.e. "UnCompactor"), on the
other hand, could be made to work on a 512KE, and I believe that he is working
on that now.  Since Extractor is freeware, this would eliminate this argument
against the use of Compactor.

On the other hand, it will probably not be possible to make Extractor work on a
Mac 512K, because it uses the HFS in some fundamental manner.

>I don't wish to cut the necks of people with the
>older machines, but all that disk space shouldn't be wasted so the few
>that still have un upgraded 512KEs can still run the software.  Alot of 
>the software seems to be getting big enough so it won't run on 512KE machines
>anyways.

We're talking public archives, here....you can do what you want on your own
machine, but let the archive maintainers decide if, to save some disk space,
they are going to cut off a small but still significant number of users from
the many types of files which they still *can* use (e.g. many applications,
graphics, text, sounds, ...).

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  *      **                  Scott Robert Anderson      gatech!emoryu1!phssra
   *   *    *    **          phssra@unix.cc.emory.edu   phssra@emoryu1.bitnet
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