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From: nicholaA@batman.moravian.EDU (Andy Nicholas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: NuPak 2.0
Summary: nupak/shrinkit
Message-ID: <1208@batman.moravian.EDU>
Date: 13 Mar 90 05:55:36 GMT
References: <25fb4fd0.5f7@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> <104*delaneyg@wnre.aecl.ca> <1990Mar12.202529.12084@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA
Lines: 63

In article <1990Mar12.202529.12084@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, cs122aw@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Scott Alfter) writes:

>>This NuPak thing looks like a really bad deal...
> 
> Indeed it does.  It doesn't even support the classic IIs!  ProDOS 8 may not
> know what to do with resource forks and such, but I think the ability to read
> StuffIt and BinHex on the II on the II could be useful; sometimes I port stuff
> between the IIe in my dorm room and the SE/30s downstairs.  Andy Nicholas, on
> the other hand, has busted his ass to make ShrinkIt usable on as little as a
> 64K II Plus!  I really appreciate the efforts of people who like to keep the
> older machines plugging along.  (As for me, I have a 128K enhanced IIe.)

Nupak is a shrinkit compatible archiving program (so far).  Anything you create
with nupak should be able to be extracted with gs/shrinkit.  I don't really
mind this at all.. although the situation could get markedly worse if joshua
decides to start doing stuff "his own way" and puts archives into strange
formats which no one can read... after all, that's why I wrote the NuFX
documentation, so people could freely use the format.  I just hope no one
abuses that format, though.

If anyone wants a copy of the latest NuFX docs, send me a letter and an
address... I have to xerox it out of the call -apple article I did.  That's
the current documentation as far as anyone else is concerned.  I'll be
sending Apple the updated stuff for that article sometime... well, soon. :)

> Indeed it may very well have that effect.  Why would I write a program if I
> knew I could get it from someone else?  ShrinkIt is copyrighted, right?  If it
> is ever discovered that NuPak uses any ShrinkIt code, I hope Andy registered
> his ShrinkIt copyright and can raise the money for a lawyer to take the NuPak
> folks to court.  (Yeah, right--pay for a lawyer on the pittance your folks
> send from home! :-) )

Actually, I did formally copyright shrinkit... the registration number
is something like TXu 393-996.

Suing rarely accomplishes anything but feeding lawyers and sapping your energy.
I would far prefer to just move on and write something else.

> get hold of a copy of NuPak, don't send in your shareware fee.  If you haven't
> gotten a copy, don't bother.  I'm sure someone else (you listening, Andy?) is
> bright enough to give us BinHex and StuffIt some other way, should there be a
> need for it.  (You can always live without, of course, and send uncompressed
> files!)

Well, actually, yes... gs/shrinkit currently supports unstuffing...  The
decoder is written in assembler and are rather quick when decoding... the
unstuffing requires an extra 64k available and I'm currently trying to get the
unstuffing to work in a 768k machine (unshrinking does, but not unstuffing...
too little memory). I wrote the dehuffing routines in assembler also.  they
were a real trip to write.

Wouldn't a standalone unbinhex utility be better right now than something
bundled into shrinkit?

And, if any of you turkeys think for one blasted moment that after all this
work I'm going to sit here and throw in the towel, y'all have another
thing coming.

andy

-- 

Yeah!