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)