Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:12415 comp.unix.xenix:1569
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!ames!ll-xn!husc6!panda!teddy!jpn
From: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: PKARC
Message-ID: <4638@teddy.UUCP>
Date: 25 Feb 88 20:24:47 GMT
References: <4671@ozdaltx.UUCP>
Reply-To: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 28

>If you are using PKARC, you might give some serious
>consideration to going back to the Standard ARC.

I would NEVER go back to ARC.  I applied the "official" patch to
PKARC35, which turned off "Squashing" by default.  Therefore my
copy of pkarc is 100% compatible with ARC 5.21.

Why would I bother?  Because PKARC is 10 TIMES FASTER than arc.
I don't know about anyone else, but that means a LOT to me!

>PKARC is in violation of S E A's copywrite.

This would be AWFULLY hard to prove.  I believe that pkarc is a
complete rewrite.  It's not a look-and-feel issue either.  The
only thing in common between the two programs is the compression
algorithm (Lempel-Ziv), and that is public domain!

>The *occasional*  1-3% savings in compression is hardly
>worth the problems caused by incompability.

I agree.  But with the official patch from PK which turns off
the new compression mode (unless you use the right options),
it blows the pants off ARC from SEA.

---
John P. Nelson
   decvax!genrad!teddy!jpn
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