Message-Id: <199611120957.WAA22298@papaioea.manawatu.gen.nz>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <malcolm AT mail DOT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz>
From: "Malcolm Taylor" <malcolm AT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz>
Organization: Grafik Software
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 22:55:39 +1200
Subject: Smaller distribution archives
Reply-to: malcolm AT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz
CC: sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu (Charles Sandmann),
        Mark Habersack <grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl>, grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl

Hi all,

	I've just finished writing the compression routines for a new free 
archiver (still got the archiving bits to go). I'm going to distribute the 
sources in the hope that they can be ported to a few different 
operating systems in the spirit of Info-Zip. Here are some figures of 
the compression gained on some of the v2.0 distribution archives 
(haven't got v2.01 yet).
		zip			new
lgp271b	633,570		346,896
txi360b	550,850		408,921
djlsr200	1,214,480	555,716
djdev200	1,121,916	652,589
mak373b	196,928		164,776
gcc272b	1,070,665	859,981
bnu252b	1,257,436	543,677
gdb412b	454,984		400,411
total		6,500,829	3,932,967

This is a 40% saving over pkzip - over 2.5Mb on these files. The 
speed is between 1 to 2 times as long as pkzip's maximum compression 
mode, and it uses less than 3Mb of memory. The compression was 
performed by using pkzip with no compression, then running the new 
compressor over that zip-file.

Now for a few questions. What should I call it? This may sound like a 
trivial thing (it is really :), but I don't have any ideas. Anyone 
want to help with porting efforts?

Thanks,
Malcolm