Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:13223 comp.binaries.ibm.pc:579
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Standard format for ARCed files
Message-ID: <9945@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: 15 Mar 88 20:02:45 GMT
References: <5439@swan.ulowell.edu> <551@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <21480@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Reply-To: davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Distribution: na
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 36

In article <21480@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> rrodrigu@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Russ Rodriguez) writes:
>
>Who care whether the UN*X archive program can read them or not??? This is 
>COMP.BINARIES.IBM.PC, not COMP.UN*X, so whatever you pull off this 
>board is going to end up on a PC anyway. I vote for the self-extracting 
>archives over the arced-only files.  I guess it's a vote for whether to
>use the ZOO or the Phil Katz self extracting archivers.  I'll take either
>but condemn to death the UN*X archive utility.

  You're missing the point. Most of the people reading this do so on
UNIX machines. If the ARC file can be read in UNIX we can look at the
doc and decide if the program justifies the effort of pulling it over a
phone line.

  What you propose is that if UNIX users want to see if a program is
useful, let'em take five hours to pull it over a modem, THEN find out it
has no application.

  I disagree that whatever you pull off this group winds up on a PC
anyways. At least for me, most of what I pull off this group winds up in
the bit bucket or archives, because it doesn't justify the effort to
download it at the current time.

  Actually I wouldn't ever just run a program I can't check, anyway. I
have some reasonable tools to check things extracted with MY arc
program, before I let them look at the CPU, but I doubt that many people
will be as trusting as you imply.

  If I send you a program and tell you it does something useful, just
unpack it, will you promise to run it? I didn't think so. All this
without getting into the 6-9k various unpackers add to the size (and our
phone bill).
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me