Hi again, On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Ivan Shmakov <oneing...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> I wonder if it's possible to use an open format for the releases >> (like, e. g., Zip used for FreeDOS packages, or 7-Zip, offering >> better compression ratios, though I'm unsure if it's available >> for FreeDOS)? The Rar archiver uses a proprietary format which, >> AIUI, no free software unarchiver is able to process. > > The only reason UnRAR is non-free, AFAICT, is because it says "don't > develop a RAR competitor with it".
Long story short: we all have our quirks, habits, old software, and we stick to it. You'll take my old stuff when you pry it from my cold, dead hands! ;-) Seriously, it's not hard to sympathize with those who still use lots of non-free stuff. I do it too (barely), but when I have a choice, it's best to avoid it, esp. since it (obviously, sadly) makes it harder to redistribute things (which is kinda the whole point, to me, to improve and share). So, while it's easy to say, "Use free/libre tools", there isn't always a suitable replacement, esp. since GNU/Linux tends to overly focus on ultra modern cpus and OSes. Back to RAR ... I know of a handful of guys who love using RAR for DOS. However, it dropped 16-bit support many releases ago, so I'm not even sure which one last had that support (2.50? Ask Trixter / Jim Leonard!). Even the 32-bit DOS version was, IIRC, EMX-compiled, which had a few "quirks" (bugs). And recent RAR 4.x dropped legacy platforms without Unicode support (though they still sell a shareware version of "obsolete" 3.93 for DOS). I've not majorly used it, but I assume it's got lots of useful options and features that some people just can't live without. (I personally prefer 7-Zip or ZIP, but I'm well aware of many other formats, at least superficially.) You can find all the old RAR versions you'd ever need online at SAC.sk mirror(s). Thanks to BTTR's rr, we do have (official but apparently non-free) UnRAR 3.8.5 ported to DOS via DJGPP (G++), and it's mirrored on iBiblio. No one has really complained as it works plenty fine. I'd almost question whether it really is "non-free" (as that is often misused), but in this case it's fairly understandable (almost ... does anybody really "want" to write a RAR-compatible compressor? doubt it). Anyways ... apparently unrarlib 0.4.0 (very tiny, ANSI C) from 2002 is indeed free/libre (loosely based upon Roshal's UnRAR but he gave GPL acceptance for this old version), but it only handles older 2.x formats (e.g. WinRAR 2.9), not the newer 3.x ones. It has a silly getfile.c example in it, which is horribly kludgy (hardcodes WIN32 or UNIX and neglects fopen()'s "rb" for the latter, which confuses DJGPP), but it seems to work (decompress from archive). They even made a separate version of unrarlib sources downloadable in .rar format (I guess to prove a point)! ;-) So, as long as any .RAR is created to be 2.x compatible, you can unpack it with unrarlib. However, most .RARs I have (not many, but ...) seem to almost all be newer 3.x ones. Trying to ask a software author to use older compression is almost senseless (they could always just use .7z if they really wanted). Don't get your hopes up for that. In short, no big whoop, I don't expect anyone to care, honestly. But that's all I know (for now). P.S. There is an LGPL decompressor called UnArchiver, but it's written in Objective C (and C++ ??). I have not tried building any part of it with DJGPP. But I guess it exists. (I dunno ... how hardcore a zealot can we be? Sure, it'd be nice, but nothing's perfect. Meh.) http://www.unrarlib.org/ http://code.google.com/p/theunarchiver/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
