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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watdragon!jjboritz
From: jjboritz@watdragon.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Re: Squashing
Message-ID: <3075@watdragon.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 11-Jul-87 04:13:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: watdrago.3075
Posted: Sat Jul 11 04:13:41 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 07:33:13 EDT
References: <1248@osiris.UUCP> <3320029@hpsrlc.HP.COM>
Reply-To: jjboritz@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Jim Boritz)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 63
Summary: You should be paying attention.

In article <3320029@hpsrlc.HP.COM> darrylo@hpsrlc.HP.COM (Darryl Okahata) writes:
>
>     Second, is the amount of space saved by squashing really worth the
>aggravation to people who have ARC and can't understand why ARC won't
>de-ARC a file?  You mentioned that the moderator "stated clearly the
>method for which he would use for posting".  Is this statement always
>available?  What about people who missed the first (?) posting where this
>was stated?  "Tough luck", huh.  From the number of postings here, I'd say
>that a fair number of people are having trouble with Squashing.
>
>     -- Darryl Okahata
>	hplabs!hpcea!hpsrla!darrylo
>	CompuServe: 75206,3074
>
>Disclaimer: the above is the author's personal opinion and is not the
>opinion or policy of his employer or of the little green men that
>have been following him all day.

If you had paid attention to comp.binaries.ibm.pc you would have noticed that
a few days ago, a summary was posted.  The summary listed all files that had 
been posted in the last month and it also restated the method by which 
binaries would be posted.

Following this, PKARC was posted again.  In the summary the moderator stated
that he would repost PKARC EVERY MONTH to allow newcomers to obtain it.
Thus on average newcomers would only have to wait 15 days for PKARC to roll 
by their site once again.  This is probably an overstatement since many sites
hold postings for awhile.

I think that what people have trouble with is that they did not pay attention
either when Brandon Allbery (I'm tired of calling him "The Moderator") stated
the method he would use for ARCing files to the net.  Then they thought, "Well
I already have SEA's ARC, I don't need to download PKARC."  My only reply is,
"Well I already have DOS 1.0, I don't need DOS 3.X" :-) 

My argument is that anyone that can download from the net to get software 
like Right Hand Man and PC HACK, can also download PKARC.

I do agree that it is frustrating to download a file only to find out that I
do not have the right ARC program to de-ARC.  But if the conclusion is to 
be compatible with the lowest common archiving methods, then what happens:

1.  to people with old versions of ARC.
2.  if SEA decides to make Squashing available.
3.  if newer and better (than squashing) methods for data compression
    are found.

Incompatibility has always been, and always will be a problem.  This is 
especially true for shareware, where many many versions of a product are
released.  Sure squashing does not save that much space over the other 
methods yet, but there may be better ones to come.  Are you going to argue
that progress should be halted to save a little frustration.

Let's all go back to 110 baud. :-)

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