Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!feg
From: feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: ZOO/ARC Discussion
Summary: I'd rather control this myself
Keywords: Zoo Arc
Message-ID: <25981@clyde.ATT.COM>
Date: 6 May 88 12:18:29 GMT
References: <827@uvm-gen.UUCP> <21371@amdcad.AMD.COM> <25745@clyde.ATT.COM> <10709@steinmetz.ge.com>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany NJ
Lines: 31

In article <10709@steinmetz.ge.com>, davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) writes:
> In article <25745@clyde.ATT.COM> feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) writes:

> | > My understanding is that zoo can handle directories and arc can't.  If
> | > that is true, it would seem zoo is preferable. 
> | 
> | Will someone please explain why any archiver's ability to
> | handle directories is important for transmitting binaries
> | on USENET?
> 
>   Briefly, there are large PD/shareware packages which reside in several
> directories, such as help, graphics screens, overlays, etc. It is
> desirable to pack these so that they unpack where they are needed,
> rather than say "create a directory fubar and unpack this archive
> there..." 
> -- 
It is the recent fashion with much commercial software to choose for
the user the directory structure in an install program or in a .bat
file.  If given the chance, I skip this procedure because too many
times these choices would write over or delete existing files, or
mess up my existing directory structure.

While I agree that this capability of zoo is a nice feature for
internal use, I am as dubious of external choices for my directory
structure from the net as I am from, say Microsoft. (Read Dick
Flanagan's experience for an example).

My question was more a rhetorical one: how often in USENET binary
postings is such a feature desirable or even necessary?

Forrest Gehrke