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From: preston@felix.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: ARC vs SHAR
Message-ID: <2332@felix.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Feb-87 14:46:19 EST
Article-I.D.: felix.2332
Posted: Mon Feb 23 14:46:19 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Feb-87 21:33:44 EST
References: <799@water.UUCP>
Sender: root@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: preston@felix.UUCP (Preston L. Bannister)
Organization: FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa, CA
Lines: 25

>I would like to pose the question:  Why use shar?

Simply because you can look at a shar file directly to see if the
shar'd stuff is of interest or not.  For those people where the process
of getting stuff from news into their ST is time-consuming or expensive, 
the shar'd file is a big win.

A secondary consideration might be the cost to the net of shipping the
shar'd or arc'd file(s).  I believe that Unix sites generally run the
news articles through a file compression program.  Generally,
compressing a text file will result in a smaller file than compressing
an already compressed file.  So arc'd collections of files may be
_more_ expensive distribute through news than shar'd files.

With the problems I have occasionally had with shar'd files, I tend to
prefer using arc.   On the other hand, it is quite easy for me to get
things from news articles into my ST.  I would expect other people to
feel differently.

========================================
Preston L. Bannister
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