Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!amelia!msf
From: msf@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Michael S. Fischbein)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Standard for file transmission
Message-ID: <555@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 4 May 88 11:31:17 GMT
References: <292@cullsj.UUCP> <55@psuhcx.psu.edu> <537@csccat.UUCP> <I> <would> <like> <to> <clear> <up> <a> <couple> <of> <notions> <that> <have> <been> <expressed> <over> <296@cullsj.UUCP>
Reply-To: msf@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Michael S. Fischbein)
Organization: NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
Lines: 23
Keywords: protocol compression source

In article <296@cullsj.UUCP> jeff@cullsj.UUCP (Jeffrey C. Fried) writes:
>  1) COMPRESS is a text only compression routine.  It will not now, or ever,
>     help in the compression of binary files.

This is absolutely untrue.  Compress works fine on binary files; I have seen
200 to 1 reductions on some bitmaps. Tarfiles compress readily, etc.

>  4) COMPRESS works faster and better on text files then the ARC routines
>     because they use 12 bit compression, where 13-bit (and more) are possible
>     under even the PC for COMPRESS (i've tried it on ans AT-clone).

16-bit compress is possible on IBM-PC's; it reportedly even runs under MSDOS.

Mention was made later in the original to uuencode; the atob and btoa programs
are more easier to use and are also freely available in source form.

	mike

-- 
Michael Fischbein                 msf@ames-nas.arpa
                                  ...!seismo!decuac!csmunix!icase!msf
These are my opinions and not necessarily official views of any
organization.