Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!netcom!ergo
From: ergo@netcom.COM (Isaac Rabinovitch)
Newsgroups: comp.compression
Subject: Re: Is PKZIP for Unix available now?
Message-ID: <1991Apr8.195351.4783@netcom.COM>
Date: 8 Apr 91 19:53:51 GMT
References: <1991Apr5.020101.12632@math.ufl.edu> <1991Apr5.085924.15666@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Organization: UESPA
Lines: 33

In <1991Apr5.085924.15666@nntp-server.caltech.edu> madler@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Mark Adler) writes:

>In article <1991Apr5.020101.12632@math.ufl.edu> wang@math.ufl.edu writes:
>>We have been talking about that the PKZIP package for Unix would soon be
>>released. Has it been released yet?


>And, ahem, no, it's not released yet.  Real Soon Now.  It works, but
>implosion is too slow.  It is at 0.7 now.  The plan is to get VMS
>support in for 0.8, faster implosion for 0.9, and then get that all
>ironed out for the first release as 1.0.  As for a time estimate, I'm
>not doing the implosion, so I can't say.  I'm hoping before summer
>starts.

So why not release it?  Taking hours to extract an archive may be
painful, but not as painful as not be able to extract it at all.
Beside, most Unix users would be people trading files with PC users
who don't have ARC -- and all they would have to do is just not use
implosion.

Does anybody register the irony in this problem?  PKZIP caught on
because ARC was painfully slow.  ARC was painfully slow because that
was the only way (or so SEA thought) to keep it portable....

>Mark Adler
>madler@pooh.caltech.edu
-- 

	ergo@netcom.com 			Isaac Rabinovitch
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