Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: ZOO/ARC Discussion
Message-ID: <10681@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 2 May 88 21:07:32 GMT
References: <827@uvm-gen.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 31
Keywords: Zoo Arc

In article <827@uvm-gen.UUCP> opergb@uvm-gen.UUCP (Gary Bushey) writes:
| A run a small PD Software library and am rebuilding it using compressed an/or
| crunched format.  I was wondering if I should use Zoo or Arc and which version
| to accomplish this.  Which one is going to become the one used in 
| comp.binaries.ibm.pc?

  I suspect neither. I can't see forcing the moderator into repacking
every submission. There are good technical reasons for using zoo, and
good historical reasons for using arc. There are good technical reasons
for not using PKARC at this time.

  I think postings will be in whatever format the poster uses, unless
some other format such as DWC or PKARC is used.

  I would like to mention that this *is* a UNIX network, and many of us
have to use a modem to move stuff to a PC. For that reason we want to
unpack the documentation and look at it on the UNIX system.

  Given that, PKARC format is not unpackable on SysV, and only a small
number of BSD sites as yet. I doubt that there are 10 UNIX sites in the
country which can handle DWC, and two which handle FASTARCH.

  There are two major reasons why people want to use zoo over arc;
(a) features such as comments and subdirectories, and (b) performance,
since zoo is 5-8 times faster than arc *in UNIX*. Neither of these are
compelling reasons, and I think the choice should be left to the poster
between these alternatives.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me