Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!ai-lab!life!sbchanin From: sbchanin@ai.mit.edu (Steve Chanin) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Don't post stuff using stuffit Message-ID: Date: 27 Dec 90 22:47:38 GMT Sender: news@ai.mit.edu Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab Lines: 59 In response to the past few articles which mentioned problems with stuffit, I'd say don't use it. Use Compactor instead. Compactor is a $25 shareware copmression program which can produce self-extracting archives if you want it. Its performance characteristics (better compression, comparable uncompress time) make it a much better choice for network transferred software. The following is an article I posted to info-mac which compares Compactor to Stuffit and Stuffit Classic. By the way, I have no connection with any of the individuals/companies responsible for these products. Steve ==================================== Date: Mon, 17 Dec 90 12:10:35 EST From: sbchanin@ai.mit.edu (Steve Chanin) Subject: Q&D benchmarks for shareware compression utilities I was curious about the relative performance of the shareware compression utilities currently available, so I decided to benchmark them. Listed below are times and % compressions for Stuffit 1.5.1, Stuffit Deluxe, and Compactor. For Stuffit 1.5.1, I only used LZW encoding because Huffman is almost never smaller and trying it slows stuff down. For Stuffit Classic, I tried both Fast and Better. With Compactor I just used the defaults. Tests were run on a Mac II with 8MB running multifinder with NCSA 2.3.2 (w/ BYU) open in the background (its window was shrunk and I just let it sit there quiescent). In each test, I compressed FrameMaker a 726,971 byte application and Clip Art a 13 item folder containing 627,831 bytes of data. All times are in seconds and 1:35 means (obviously -:) ) 1 minute and 35 seconds. CONCLUSIONS: Stuff which is going to be posted to archives should be in compactor form since the compression rate to uncompress time ratio is so much better. For personal use, use 1.5.1 for speed, or compactor if size is important. Unless you need some of the more obscure features of Classic, trash it. Program Compress Uncompress File Time Saved Time --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Classic - Fast Mode FrameMaker 52 46% 45 ClipArt 1:35 27% 1:01 1.5.1 - LZW Only FrameMaker 43 44% 39 ClipArt 1:05 23% 52 Compactor 1.21 FrameMaker 1:40 59% 40 ClipArt 2:00 47% 57 Classic - Better Mode FrameMaker 7:00 59% 1:12 ClipArt - didn't bother since compressing framemaker took so long -- =============================================================================== DOMAIN: sbchanin@ai.mit.edu MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab USMAIL: Steven Chanin, 545 Technology Square Rm. 827, Cambridge Ma 02139 PHONE : (617) 253-8963