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From: kanefsky@cs.umn.edu (Steve Kanefsky)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Don't post stuff using stuffit
Message-ID: <1990Dec30.221035.16112@cs.umn.edu>
Date: 30 Dec 90 22:10:35 GMT
References: <40105@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <1990Dec28.110336@hari.Viewlogic.COM>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis - CSCI Dept.
Lines: 34

In article <1990Dec28.110336@hari.Viewlogic.COM> peter@hari.Viewlogic.COM (Peter Colby) writes:
>
>
>	If SD 2.0 is even approximately close to Compactor in
>speed and compression ratio, or if I can incorporate the freely
>available LZW algorithm used in UN*X compress (and MacCompress)
>as another compression method in SD, then I'll run for SD 2 so
>fast Compactor won't even see my dust.

The Quick Tips column in the latest (Jan '91) issue of MacWorld suggests
that several factors make a tremendous difference in un-stuffing time
for Stuffit 1.5.1, so possibly they will also make a difference in Stuffit
Classic and Stuffit Deluxe.  I haven't tried any of these myself yet,
but apparently, using a screen saver when unstuffing, running Stuffit and
the System off of a floppy(!), and setting the Monitors CDev in the control 
panel to Black&White all drastically improve un-stuffing performance.  The 
times given for unstuffing a 98K archive went like this:

73 seconds with no screen saver active and running off of 80MB Apple hard disk
53 seconds with After Dark screen saver and hard disk
50 seconds with no screen saver, active system and Stuffit app. on floppy
43 seconds with After Dark, active system and Stuffit on floppy.

All times doubled when monitors CDev set to 256 colors.  That's about a 
3.4-fold increase in performance between the best and worst cases.


I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but I thought I'd throw
it out for people to try so we could get some statistically significant
results.  It would also be interesting to see if Compactor benefits from
any of the above methods.
-- 
Steve Kanefsky             
kanefsky@cs.umn.edu