Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!lll-tis!mordor!sri-spam!rutgers!im4u!ut-sally!utah-cs!utah-gr!uplherc!esunix!blgardne
From: blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: zoo enhancements solicited
Message-ID: <607X@esunix.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jan 88 00:00:00 GMT
References: <2562@gryphon.CTS.COM>
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation
Lines: 32

in article <2562@gryphon.CTS.COM>, bilbo@pnet02.cts.com (Bill Daggett) says:
> 
> There is a third program recently released called PAK.  PAK's neat advantage
> is that you don't need it to unpack a program.  You simply run <filename>.PAK
> and it unpacks itself - but like ZOO the compressing is not as great as ARC. 
> PAK does accept any normal file length name like ZOO.

Yes, PAK is a godsend for getting ARC or ZOO or FixObj into the hands of
new users. I've got a ZOO.PAK and ARC.PAK available on the BBS that I
run the Amiga section on.

There is some confusion though, since there is also a program called
PackIt. To the best of my knowledge, PackIt does no compression, it just
cats files together, it may handle subdirectories though. PackIt is a
completely different beast from PAK. (PAK is distributed in a file
called PAK.PAK, it contains PAK and the docs, and unPAKs itself.)

I have to disagree with the statements that ZOO doesn't do as well on
compression as ARC. ZOO will do very little (if any) compression on
picture files or sampled sound files (I would guess that IFF and ZOO use
the same compression technique), but on any other type of file (source,
executable, text) ZOO generally does a better job of compression than
ARC. As I remember ZOO archives were usually 5-20% smaller than ARC
archives.

When you add ZOO's faster compression, and the ability to handle long
filenames, I much prefer ZOO over ARC.
-- 
Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland    540 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108
UUCP Addresses:  {ihnp4,ucbvax,allegra,decvax}!decwrl!esunix!blgardne
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"I don't see no points on your ears boy, but you sound like a Vulcan!"