Message-ID: <32851D86.B36@ananke.amu.edu.pl> Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 01:10:46 +0100 From: Mark Habersack Reply-To: grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl Organization: Home, sweet home MIME-Version: 1.0 To: malcolm AT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz CC: "John M. Aldrich" , djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: Why not to use 'tar' before packing DJGPP? References: <199611090739 DOT UAA04820 AT papaioea DOT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Malcolm Taylor wrote: > size using RKIVE or ACB. This is an extreme case though as RKIVE > requires 8Mb and ACB 16Mb to work well, so aren't really suited to > the 'everyone can use' category, but there are other more generally > usable compressors (eg the new JAR from the maker of ARJ). I keep my DJGPP distribution in RAR 2.0 format and it's about 35% smaller. RKIVE is excellent but unfortunately slow (I imagin it uses some sophisticated compression algorithm, maybe fractal one?) and I haven't seen the two others you mentioned. But I agree, PKZIP's algorithms are quite dinosaur today... > You could put the compression straight into the installer itself, and > hence enable the use of tar or something else without anyone having > to be too troubled by it. In fact, the installer encapsulates the ZIP Deflate/Inflate algorithm and it would be fairly easy to add the tar support, as well as GZIP (well, GZIP is there for free, the installer uses zlib). > One of the biggest problems with this is that it would require a > complete switch to the new archive format, or doubling up of archives > (old and new format) which would probably not sit well with DJ or the > Simtel.Net maintainers. That's right. Such a switch would take some time. Besides, I think DJ is compressing DJGPP on Unix, and AFAIK there's no other common compressor than ZIP or TAR on DOS and Unixes. -- ************************************************************************** You tell me I'm drunk then you sit back and smug a while convinced that you're right, that you're still in command of your senses. I laugh at your superior attitude, your insincere platitudes will make me throw up. The sooner you realise I'm perfectly happy if I'm left to decide the company I choose. ********************** http://ananke.amu.edu.pl/~grendel *****************