Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!telmail!neabbs!ajbrouw
From: ajbrouw@neabbs.UUCP (ALBERT-JAN BROUWER)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Imploder vs. PowerPacker
Message-ID: <571971@neabbs.UUCP>
Date: 19 Feb 91 20:53:40 GMT
Organization: NEABBS multi-line BBS +31-20-5733533 (20x), Amsterdam, Holland.
Lines: 73


Apperently there was a slight problem with the mailing software at
this site, so my previous postings got corrupted. Let's hope this
time it gets through.

--

The Imploder V3.1 + documentation and support may be found on Fish
disk 422. No all things present there are from a single release;
somebody went through the effort of collecting the various items.
It looks fairly complete so I guess it'll do until 4.0 comes along.

BTW, we're not about to repeat past mistakes and do yet another
incomplete release, confusing the hell out of everybody. The 4.0
distribution will be picture perfect.


I'm afraid I'll have to refer people with _basic_ queries to F422.
I currently don't have affordable UseNet write access (so mailing
manuals is out for sure).


Andrew Clayton writes:
> So, is this Imploder a program that one buys, or is it shareware
> [:-/] or is it PD?  Just curious.

It used to be commercial. Discovery intl. died. So now it's free.

3.1 was only supposed to be released to a limited audience. Because it was
an intermediate version the music etc. was removed. The "shareware" blurp
was simply trying out how things might look.

Unfortunately it got leaked. Still we endorse it as the next best
thing to 4.0 (yet 2b released)

> I find that -executable- packers are a waste of time and effort on
> any reasonably sized HD.  :-) (Though I use LHARC a lot to compress
> stuff that I don't normally access).

Mostly true. I only bother with the large executables/fonts/libraries
and such. It does save some megs, but percentually much less so than
on say a floppy system. Unfortunately even large harddrives have this
odd tendency of filling up.


Chris Seaman writes:
> I found Imploder 3.1 on ab20, and tried it on Photon paint and Dpaint III,
> with odd results.  Both are overlayed, and appeared to work when compressed.
> Yet, when I 'uncrunch' them, the files are different than the original
> (pre-crunch) versions.  Why?

Before compression the Imploder preprocesses executables. It kicks out all
the redundant stuff by merging subreloc tables referring to the same hunk,
sorting relocs (improves compression), removing debug symbols etc. etc.

So the uncrunched executable isn't guaranteed to be byte by byte identical
as far as loadfile control codes are concerned.

What is guaranteed is that the memory images created when the original,
imploded and uncrunched program versions are loaded are identical.

> Also, even though I added explode.library to libs: (I even tried using
> loadlib to make it 'resident'), I can't get the 'Library' gadget
> un-ghosted.

That depends on what kinds of executables you're trying to crunch.
Dpaint III is overlayed, and overlayed files can't be library imploded
so the Imploder disables the 'Library' gadget when one of these is being
processed.


-Albert

"Want to program the Amiga? RTFRKRMs!"