Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!ljdickey
From: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: UNIX Toolkit for the ST, Manual pages and one binary
Keywords: UNIX ST ATARI C
Message-ID: <1507@water.waterloo.edu>
Date: 8 Apr 88 14:45:38 GMT
References: <184@lithium.kcl-cs.UUCP> <1497@water.waterloo.edu> <695@cacilj.UUCP>
Reply-To: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 60

In article <695@cacilj.UUCP> paul@cacilj.UUCP (Paul Close) writes:
>In article <1497@water.waterloo.edu> I write:
 [ ...  (sob) my ARC tells me ]
>>	I don't know how to handle file SH.MAN in archive man.arc
>>	I think you need a newer version of ARC.
 ...
>
>Your arc is outdated.  So is mine.  From the (ugh) IBM PC group comes this
>explanation of arc compression:   [ a lot deleted here ... ]

Thank you Paul!  and Than you Desh!

Well, the mystery about the ARC encoding of the recently posted
"man.arc"  seems to be solved.  Desh D. Sharma, of the Arts Computing
Office at the University of Waterloo ( ....ihnp4!watmath!ddsharma,
DESH@WATDCS.BITNET), tells me that apparently Andrew B. Smith
(andrew@kcl-cs.uucp) used a form of ARC that includes "Squashing" along
with the usual well known forms of compression already included in ARC.

Apparently this is akin to PKARC (what an awful name) now becoming
popular with IBM/PC users.  The principal difference in the two methods
is shown here, in this edited extraction from "ARC v man": 

SH.MAN           14598  Crunched   65%      5232     beb7   ( Old )
SH.MAN           14598  Squashed   64%      5378     beb7   ( New )

The difference in size of the "UUEed ARCed man.arc" files given by
the two methods is  *4 lines*  out of over 860.

I now have a file called man2.arc that I am willing to post to
"netlib@lakesys.uucp" for UUCP users and to
"LISTSERV@CANADA01.NetNorth" for BITNET users.   I do not want to mail
it to the world.  You will be able to tell from the following if you
want it.  Both of the file servers should destroy man2.arc after an
improved version of ARC becomes widely available.  ( Any volunteers? )

-rw-r--r--  1 ljdickey         12566 Apr  8 09:52 man2.arc

Name          Length    Stowage    SF   Size now  Date       Time    CRC
============  ========  ========  ====  ========  =========  ======  ====
SH.MAN           14598  Crunched   65%      5232   8 Apr 88   9:27a  beb7
SIZE.MAN           615  Crunched   47%       326   8 Apr 88   9:27a  eb95
SLEEP.MAN          461  Crunched   52%       225   8 Apr 88   9:27a  85e7
SORT.MAN          3211  Crunched   54%      1507   8 Apr 88   9:27a  23e6
STRINGS.MAN       1098  Crunched   47%       588   8 Apr 88   9:27a  b0d4
TAIL.MAN           994  Crunched   46%       546   8 Apr 88   9:27a  7520
TEST.MAN          1808  Crunched   58%       777   8 Apr 88   9:27a  55f0
TOUCH.MAN          890  Crunched   53%       427   8 Apr 88   9:27a  e885
TR.MAN            1755  Crunched   50%       886   8 Apr 88   9:27a  49bb
TSORT.MAN         1113  Crunched   50%       567   8 Apr 88   9:27a  4b41
UNIQ.MAN          1507  Crunched   49%       769   8 Apr 88   9:27a  6dc7
WC.MAN             705  Crunched   49%       366   8 Apr 88   9:27a  a5ad
        ====  ========            ====  ========
Total     12     28755             58%     12216  

-- 
 L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.
	ljdickey@waterloo.edu
	ljdickey@WATDCS.UWaterloo.ca	ljdickey@water.BITNET
	ljdickey@water.UUCP	or	...!uunet!water!ljdickey