Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!sumax!thebes!polari!6sceng!blm
From: blm@6sceng.UUCP (Brian Matthews)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: StuffIt Deluxe (Compactor)
Keywords: StuffIt, Compactor
Message-ID: <504@6sceng.UUCP>
Date: 1 Sep 90 18:00:39 GMT
References: <1990Aug29.093732.7927@cs.UAlberta.CA> <4390@sage.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: Six Sigma CASE, Inc.
Lines: 28

In article <4390@sage.cc.purdue.edu> ar4@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Piper Keairnes) writes:
|antoine@cs.UAlberta.CA (Antoine Verheijen) writes:
|>I think the suggestion is for everyone to start using UnStuffIt Deluxe for
|>un-archiving since it is publically available (where?) to everyone. This way,
|>it doesn't matter if StuffIt 1.5.1 or StuffIt Deluxe was used to archive.
|That WAS the original intent of my message. I'm sure that it will be
|publically available on ftp very soon. I know that several BBSs already have
|it on them.

This means I have to have two programs where one now suffices, and even
if UnStuffIt Deluxe is free, it will only be for a Mac.  I can unstuff
on Unix and PCs now.

|>   2) Compactor uses unknown/undocumented data structures and compression
|>      methods. This eliminates the possibility of developing tools on 
|>      other systems for processing compactor files (as is possible with
|>      StuffIt files) and makes it virtually impossible to try to recover
|>      partial contents in the case of a corrupted archive.

So does StuffIt Deluxe.

Add to that StuffIt's (and StuffIt Deluxe's) horrible user interface, and
Compactor is looking much better.  Now if Bill (Goodman, the author of
Compactor) would release the file format or source code to do the
compaction/decompaction, I could see Compactor becoming the new
standard.
-- 
Brian L. Matthews	blm@6sceng.UUCP