Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!ut-sally!husc6!cca!mirror!jvc From: jvc@mirror.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: PKARC 3.5 -g option Message-ID: <206900064@mirror> Date: Mon, 20-Jul-87 08:47:00 EDT Article-I.D.: mirror.206900064 Posted: Mon Jul 20 08:47:00 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 21-Jul-87 04:47:53 EDT References: <23599@sun.uucp> Lines: 42 Nf-ID: #R:sun.uucp:-2359900:mirror:206900064:000:2156 Nf-From: mirror.UUCP!jvc Jul 20 08:47:00 1987 >BUT, did SEA blithely declare compatibility, and *KEEP THE SAME >EXTENSION* (.ARC), even in the face of obvious user confusion >and angst? > Terry Sterkel Yep. Try using ARC 3.* to unarchive a file archived by ARC 4.* or ARC 5.*. "Compressing" was added in version 4.0 making it impossible for ARC 3.0 to unarchive any files packed by this new technique. The extention of the archive, however, remained the same. Imagine the "obvious user confusion" that this caused; one couldn't use SEAware's ARC to unarchive archives archived by SEAware's ARC. As for changing the extention, this would only help in the short term because either SEAware will remain stuborn and their product will die or they'll wise up and add "unsquashing" ability to their product. If their product dies, then the extentions won't matter since PKARC can unarc ARC archives. If SEA adds unsquashing, then the different extentions will be ignored and people will use their favorite unarcer first and if that doesn't work they'll try the other unarcer (and if that doesn't work, they'll look for new versions of both programs [remember, ARC 3.0 couldn't unarchive ARC 4.0 archives]). So, changing extentions won't be a long term solution and in fact will probably cause more confusion. Maybe a solution would be to add a string to the archive that would indicate which program and what version created the archive. If each unarchiver would print this string if it discovered that it was unable to unarchive one or more files, then it would help the user to figure out what was wrong. However, if SEA won't add unsquashing then they won't add this feature either. jvc@mirror.tmc.com NOTE: it was mentioned somewhere in this group that PKARC had trouble with insufficient memory errors. I got email (apparently) from phil stating that this was indeed a bug in version 2.0. This bug was a result of the Lattice compiler and not with the code (I won't waste the time relaying the explanation of the bug because this bug doesn't appear to be in version 3.5. Contact phil directly if you want the explanation.)