Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tektronix!reed!percival!escargot!bruce
From: bruce@escargot.UUCP (Bruce Hoof)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: ** Stuffit ** vs Packit
Keywords: Stuffit, Packit.
Message-ID: <156@escargot.UUCP>
Date: 9 Dec 87 02:12:51 GMT
Reply-To: bruce@escargot.UUCP (Bruce Hoof)
Organization: Coredump Central
Lines: 67



	Recently I have been reading about the pro's and con's of
Stuffit and Packit.  Very recently there have been questions on
compacting binary postings before posting them on the net.  This got me
thinking and I decided to do a couple of experiments.

	There was recently a seven part posting of teck note #176. The
size of this Hex file is 206,336 bytes. Quite a lot, no wonder it was
seven parts!!!.  This was a HexBin file of a Packit file which
contained one text file and three MacDraw files. After Unhexing, the
packit file is 154,194 bytes in length.

	I took the four individual files and stuffed them with stuffit.
The .sit file was 66,085 BYTES!!! This is a 57% REDUCTION in size over
the .pit file!  This got me thinking.  I HexBined the .sit file and
that size was 90,053 BYTES, a 56% REDUCTION over the HexBined .pit
file.

	Then just for fun I Stuffed the Packet file, came to 69,923
bytes, then HexBined that, came to 95,290 Bytes. A little bigger than
the Hexed .sit file.

	This is all very interesting but what does this mean.  Well, if
all was Ideal all the binary postings would be Stuffed before HexBined,
not all is Ideal. The way I understand it is Stuffit is Shareware.  It
is Fairly new and really good.  Not all will have a copy to unStuff
.sit files, But wasn't this true with Packit?

	To be realistic reductions of this magnitude occur with text or
pic files, files with a lot of recursion. But it has been noted that
Stuffit packs better than Packit.  If Stuffit becomes widely avaliable,
like Packit, maby we should use both?

	Think about it.  There is a lot of News traveling.  Even if
news is packed by the sending system there is still the size of the
file.  It takes up space.  It downloads and uploads slower. I have a
friend who is a sysop who has his disk full about once a week because
of the sheer size of the news he recieves.

	To take the other side I could say that Packit is in wider use
at the moment.  The Mac portion of the Usenet is small, as large as it
is.  The difference it will make might be small, but who knows.  Every
little bit helps.

	Take this file for instance.  If it was 50% + smaller it would
have taken half as long to download.  The file might be in three or
four parts, instead of seven. Who knows, It might have gotten to my
friends system all at once instead of taking two days.

	Lets face it folks.  A new generation is here. Stuffit does it
better.  I like the smaller size. I like the shorter downloading time.
I like the convience and speed.  I think Stuffit is benificial to the
user as well as to the entire Usenet.

Bruce

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer: I am just a simple mac user with no connections to any
		product or company.  I just like to give opinions.

Bruce Hoof hoofb@escargot.

Can be reached at :

   ...!tektronix!teksce!bucket!escargot!bruce.