Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 03:00:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Mike A. Harris" <mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca>
Reply-To: "Mike A. Harris" <mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca>
To: "Colin W. Glenn" <cwg01 AT gnofn DOT org>
cc: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Interactive shells Re: 32bit BIOS
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970405021141.25368E-100000@sparkie.gnofn.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970407025459.1353i-100000@capslock.com>
Organization: Total disorganization.
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Sat, 5 Apr 1997, Colin W. Glenn wrote:

> On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Jonathan E. Brickman wrote:
> > There is a standard GNU edition of both gzip and tar for DOS.
> I've got several flavors of each.
> 
> > > using TGZ.  No sane person anyway.  Besides when is the last time
> > > you saw a DOS filename with two dots ('.') in the filename?  :o)
> > Agreed.  .tgz / .tar.gz is not really a very processor-efficient
> > format.
> 
> The reason I suggest using a tar file is because _it's not compressed_.
> Which means that it really like a compressed drive, only with no
> compression, think of it as a sub-sectored drive, lots of little small
> sectors for storing lots of little small files.

Ok, that is correct, cluster wastage would be eliminated on the
help system (which otherwise would waste TONNES of space on the
user's harddisk), however TAR would ***HAVE*** to be INCLUDED
with OpenDOS then.  I don't have a problem with that, however I
still think that ZIP would be a better alternative because it
*IS* compressed.  Decompression is not very time consuming on the
size of data that will be extracted from the archives.  Besides,
the HLP files and other help file formats that exist for various
programs allready HEAVILY compress the data.  This compression
does not interfere much with speed of execution.  It is my theory
that because ASCII text compresses so well that the computer can
load the compressed data from disk and then decompress it in
memory faster than if the raw uncompressed data were read off the
disk in the first place.  This phenomena also works with lots of
PCX images which contain long runs of a single color.


Mike A. Harris        |             http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris
Computer Consultant   |                  Coming soon: dynamic-IP-freedom...
My dynamic address: http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris/ip-address.html
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Xwindows: Forget '95.  Use a REAL GUI.