Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!ncar!boulder!sunybcs!bingvaxu!leah!itsgw!batcomputer!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!reed!percival!jamesd
From: jamesd@percival.UUCP (James Deibele)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Phil Katz's bad form
Message-ID: <1282@percival.UUCP>
Date: 26 Jun 88 00:27:32 GMT
References: <5912@megaron.arizona.edu> <4499@killer.UUCP> <1861@aecom.YU.EDU> <8151@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: jamesd@percival.UUCP (James Deibele)
Organization: Percy's UNIX, Portland, OR.
Lines: 25

In article <8151@brl-smoke.ARPA> w8sdz@brl.arpa (Keith B. Petersen (WSMR|towson) ) writes:
>Someone suggested that Phil Katz should have used .ARK for a file
>extension.  That is already in use by the CP/M program that makes
>MSDOS-compatible archives.  The .ARK extension was chosen to indicate
>that the program was for CP/M rather than MSDOS because some BBS systems
>carry files for both operating systems.

So call it .ARP for ARchive from Phil or whatever if he wants to keep the
default as incompatible.  I guess I can see a use for the .ARK extension,
because it's a quicker way of saying "This SEA-standard archive is designed
for CP/M machines"; you could have FILEDATE.ARC and FILEDATE.ARK in the same
directory.  I agree that PKware's utilities are much faster than SEA's, but
I wish that Phil Katz had been more respectful of the standards.  When there
were complaints at the time 3.5 was first released, he (Katz) defended by
saying that some catalog programs (for example) were hard-coded to accept
.ARC as the extension and that he didn't want to cut his market by using
something else.  What exactly happened to those utilities when they tried
to use one of his non-standard .ARC files, he never said.  
 

-- 
James S. Deibele   jamesd@qiclab or jamesd@percival
TECHbooks: The Computer Book Specialists   (800) TECH-BKS
3646 SE Division  Portland, OR  97202      (503) 238-1005
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