Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:17937 comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:665
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!mcdchg!falkor!heiby
From: heiby@falkor.UUCP (Ron Heiby)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: PK361.EXE
Message-ID: <173@falkor.UUCP>
Date: 11 Aug 88 12:21:25 GMT
References:  <11792@steinmetz.ge.com> <4936@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: heiby@mcdchg.UUCP (Ron Heiby)
Organization: Luck Dragons, Magic, & Friends
Lines: 69

Craig Browning (browning@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP) writes:
> In <11792@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:

> >  I don't think that anyone want to switch until/unless the UNIX source
> >is available for the new compressor.
> 
> You're in the minority, as I will point out again.
He may be in the minority, but I bet there are a lot of us out here in
that same minority.  In my world, comp.binaries.ibm.pc comes into a system
running UNIX.  That's the first place over which I can exert some control.
Eventually, stuff that looks interesting/useful gets transferred to my PC.

Why not just send everything to the PC?  Because, for one thing, it's a
pain in the ass.  It doesn't just happen automatically, I've got to fire
up the file transfer software on both machines.  Also, I have to worry
about disk space on my twin 20Meg PC drives a lot more than I have to worry
about the 150Meg ESDI on my Motorola UNIX box.  Also, for software I plan
to use, I enjoy printing a copy of what documentation exists.  On my PC,
I have a 10-year-old Epson MX-100 and a (approx) 10 cps Olympia page-at-a-
time printer.  On my UNIX box, I have an NEC laser printer.  If I send
everything to my PC, I have to then extract the documentation down there
and ship it back UP to the UNIX box, again.  Waste.

Even if all this could be automated and made very easy, there's a startling
difference in speed of concatenating multiple parts of a posting together,
uudecoding the result, running the extraction, and uploading the
documentation back to UNIX from the PC and doing the same (less extra
upload) operations on a 16MHz 68020 running UNIX (soon a 20MHz 68030!).
I mean, it's a BIG difference.  Just sitting and watching my PC grind
through it all is a waste of time.

> >readers to use, because I'm tired of having to move stuff to a PC to
> >read the docs to see if I should bother to move them to a PC at all.
This is a BIG benefit of being able to deal with the archive format on
the HOST computer (UNIX, mostly).

> And I hope the moderator repaks (spelling intentional) them to the standard
> format in use, ARC or whatever. Otherwise we'll have to keep several de-arcers
> around to use postings.
Yes, it would be nice if this were done, but I don't see any way around
keeping the last version of ARK or the PK* products around.  I, at least,
have archive floppies with a bunch of .ARC files.  Plus, I still get some
software from Compuserve and other places.

> Maybe it will do tree structures, something I
> haven't seen a practical use for yet but a few seem to strongly desire.
Some people out here have a hard disk.  Tree structures in the file system
make life a whole lot easier when you have multiple megabytes of files to
organize, much more so than 360K on a single floppy.  Besides, when you
want to put your 513th file in the root directory of your hard disk, you'll
find you have some trouble!  (Of course, there's also the whole problem
with all of the packages that contain a file called "READ.ME".)  These are
just a few of the practical uses for tree structures in a file system.
Coming from a background that includes having to deal with such directory
trees, I recognize the desirability of having an archiver that understands
them, too.  Most people who have hard disks do (or should do) regular
backups.  Most of them have multiple directories on their disks.  It would
be very inconvenient if the backup programs on the market could deal with
only the root directory or even only the current directory.  I think that
when you buy a hard disk, you'll find this to be true.

(I know that there are folks out there who don't read the manuals and
blithely fill up their hard disk root directory with files until one day
their hard disk is "full", containing just a couple Meg of files.  Many
of them probably go out and buy another or a bigger drive.  sigh)

-- 
Ron Heiby, heiby@mcdchg.UUCP	Moderator: comp.newprod & comp.unix
"Failure is one of the basic Freedoms!" The Doctor (in Robots of Death)