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: <10709@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 4 May 88 12:51:19 GMT
References: <827@uvm-gen.UUCP> <21371@amdcad.AMD.COM> <25745@clyde.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 23
Keywords: Zoo Arc

In article <25745@clyde.ATT.COM> feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) writes:
| In article <21371@amdcad.AMD.COM>, phil@amdcad.AMD.COM (Phil Ngai) 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..." since anyone reading this group will know that there are some
new users who would have trouble with doing that. Use of zoo reduces the
instructions to "type 'zoo x//' and press RETURN", which is more likely
to be done correctly.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me