Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!csus.edu!ucdavis!csusac!csuchico.edu!cindy!tempest From: tempest@walleye.ecst.csuchico.edu (Kenneth K.F. Lui) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: StuffIt Deluxe file format Message-ID: Date: 5 Sep 90 23:07:36 GMT References: <5385@spt.entity.com> Sender: news@ecst.csuchico.edu (USENET) Organization: California State University, Chico Lines: 27 In-Reply-To: gz@spt.entity.com's message of 5 Sep 90 17:33:06 GMT In article <5385@spt.entity.com> gz@spt.entity.com (Gail Zacharias) writes: Stuffit 1.5 uses 14-bit LZW compression. A rule of thumb about LZW is that each additional bit gives you about a 10% decrease in size. I'll bet that Stuffit Deluxe just uses 16-bit LZW compression. So much for great leaps forward in compression technology. There is no indication that StuffIt Deluxe's Better algorithm uses 16-bit LZW coding. First, it is too slow--witness MacCompress. Second, if you do a get info on a file that has been compressed using Better, it'll say something like LZ Huffman. The algorithm may be more of an LZ-variant that uses a huffman step. This algorithm is implemented, in a similar way, in LHarc for the IBM PC-family of computers. With all of this bickering about using a public archiving system for the net, why not use tar and compress?? That's about as public as you can get! There's source, and you can port all you want...although I'm sure they've been ported already. :-) :-) :-) Ken -- _____________________________________________________________________________ Kenneth K.F. Lui | Other paths you can use: tempest@csuchico, tempest@csuchico.edu | tempest@{cscihp|walleye}.csuchico.edu __________________________|__________________________________________________