Path: utzoo!yunexus!torsqnt!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!silver!burleigh
From: burleigh@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (frank burleigh)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: zoo'ed ibm-pc binaries?
Message-ID: <3382@silver.bacs.indiana.edu>
Date: 8 Mar 89 16:59:11 GMT
Article-I.D.: silver.3382
References: <77800004@sts> <77800010@sts> <905@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Reply-To: burleigh@silver.UUCP (frank burleigh)
Organization: sociology, indiana university, bloomington
Lines: 30

In article <905@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> jbrown@jato.UUCP (Jordan Brown) writes:
>In article <77800010@sts> roy@sts.sts.com writes:
>>1) zoo doesn't compress as much as the new ZIP or PAK programs.
>>The other reason is that no money/donation is being asked for to use
>>zoo and the source code is available for anyone to make improvements
>>to.  If you think you can make zoo faster or compress better, go ahead ...
>
>Alas, you aren't allowed to.  A better compression scheme would probably
>be incompatible (old versions wouldn't be able to decode it) and so would
>be disallowed by Rahul's license agreement.

Alas, someone has got to the real issue that makes me feel very cautious
about any change in archivers now, especially to zoo.  While zoo is in
many ways superior to arc and pkpak, I can't see its technological
superiority over zip or perhaps some of the others.

On the other hand, there are dimensions of 'superiority.'  In terms of
portibility, the consensus is that zoo is far superior, at the moment.
Zip could come on strong once someone who knows how ports it over.

So, in my mind, one of the liabilities of zoo *is* that portibility and
guarantee that the present version will always accomodate 'zoos' created
with earlier versions.  Technological stagnation seems inevitable.  The
rush to zoo thus seems odd, since generally technical stagnation is not
tolerated.

-- 
Frank Burleigh  burleigh@silver.bacs.indiana.edu
USENET: ...rutgers!iuvax!silver!burleigh BITNET: BURLEIGH@IUBACS.BITNET
Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405