Xref: utzoo comp.sources.d:2057 comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:166
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!jack!elgar!ford
From: ford@elgar.UUCP (Ford Prefect )
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Standard for file transmission
Message-ID: <145@elgar.UUCP>
Date: 8 May 88 02:08:32 GMT
References: <292@cullsj.UUCP> <55@psuhcx.psu.edu> <4740@teddy.UUCP> <1082@maynard.BSW.COM> <9644@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: ford@kenobi.UUCP (Mike "Ford" Ditto)
Organization: Elgar Corporation, San Diego, CA
Lines: 41
Keywords: protocol compression source
Summary: PC != IBM-PC

In article <9644@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> laba-5ac@web7f.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Erik Talvola) writes:
>What's wrong with getting a 16-bit Compress executable file for the PC
>which was compiled with a proper C compiler?  Then, you can run a 16-bit
>compress on any PC.  You are right in that you may not be able to compile
>it with all C compilers, but you can run the executable on any PC (as long
>as you have ~500K free).

There are a few problems with this approach:

1)	Such a compiler has to exist for the operating system you are
	running.  Obviously, the author had his brain in Ms.Dos mode,
	which, since the article was cross-posted to
	comp.binaries.ibm-pc, is forgivable in this case.  But one of
	the articles that was being followed up to mentioned an O.S.
	that only supported 64k segments.  Compress just won't work
	in such an environment without major redisign (like keeping
	the arrays in a disk file :-).

2)	The executable you get must be for your CPU!  This is obvious,
	of course, but I keep detecting a definite ibm-pc-chauvanist
	state of mind in this discussion.  Don't forget that there
	are people who are still running unix on PDP-11's and proud
	of it!  The PDP-11 is very similar to the 8086 except that
	nobody does anything as kludgey as geferkin with the segment
	registers!  So the best you can get is 64k code, 64k data.

In other words, discussion of a standardized compression format must
take into account the existence of small machines.  And "PC" !=
"Intel Cpu".

Personally, I use 16-bit compress since I don't need to talk to such
small machines.  But if I need to post a binary to the net, I will
probably use 12-bit compress, because I've never heard of a machine
or compiler that couldn't run it.

					-=] Ford [=-

"Once there were parking lots,		(In Real Life:  Mike Ditto)
now it's a peaceful oasis.		ford%kenobi@crash.CTS.COM
This was a Pizza Hut,			...!sdcsvax!crash!kenobi!ford
now it's all covered with daisies." -- Talking Heads