Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcdchg!ddsw1!hammen
From: hammen@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Robert Hammen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: StuffIt Deluxe file format
Message-ID: <1990Sep08.101244.8287@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: 8 Sep 90 10:12:44 GMT
Reply-To: hammen@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Robert Hammen)
Organization: Unemployed Mac Fanatics, Inc.
Lines: 25

I've stayed out of The Great Compression Wars up until now. I'd like to
bring up a couple of issues that no one else has (to my knowledge).

1) Of the three contenders (StuffIt Deluxe, Compacter, and DiskDoubler),
StuffIt Deluxe is the only one that supports the BinHex 4.0 format, which
is of obvious importance to net.users (call me backward, but I still do the
binhexing on my Mac - it's easier to save the description from the header of
a file that way).

2) With all of the clamoring for "open" file formats, why don't we (the net 
community as a whole) develop our own compression/decompression program? It
may also allow us to develop a new format to succeed BinHex 4.0 (which is
not all that efficient, in any case - atob and btoa would be better). I'd
be willing to help coordinate a group of people interested in working on
such a project (I'm not really a Mac programmer, though, so I wouldn't be
able to do any coding). 

If we are unable to come up with a consensus on what to do, I recommend 
that we stick with the BinHex 4.0 and StuffIt 1.5.1 formats, respectively.
(A consensus? On Usenet? What an interesting, and impossible, idea!).
 
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/ Robert Hammen | Macintosh enthusiast & publishing guru, looking for a job /
/ hammen@ddsw1.mcs.com | 70701.2104@compuserve.com | GEnie: R.HAMMEN        /
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