Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s (was Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 10:05:02PM +0100, Barbie [home] wrote: On 02 September 2003 09:43 Roger Burton West wrote: (All of this only applies to the Windows world, obviously; I think the parallels in Unix, or at least Linux, would be .tar.bz2, .tar.gz, and dodgy commercial software with auto-extracting installers like the JRE.) Why obviously? RAR, ACE, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP formats are all available on both Windows and many Unix variants. On Unix, RAR and ACE are only available as binaries, which puts off a lot of people; and neither those nor ZIP preserves file ownership or permission information. So while I'm able to extract most files under Unix, I wouldn't choose those formats for something that I'm originating and plan to share primarily with other Unix users. Roger
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s (was Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Unix, RAR and ACE are only available as binaries, which puts off a lot of people; and neither those nor ZIP preserves file ownership or permission information. So while I'm able to extract most files under Unix, I wouldn't choose those formats for something that I'm originating and plan to share primarily with other Unix users. You can get unrar as source code. I posted the link yesterday. http://files10.rarlab.com/rar/unrarsrc-3.2.3.tar.gz -Dom -- | Semantico: creators of major online resources | | URL: http://www.semantico.com/ | | Tel: +44 (1273) 72 | | Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s (was Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 09:49:28AM +, Dominic Mitchell wrote: You can get unrar as source code. I posted the link yesterday. Yes, but not the compressor. Ditto for ACE and ARJ. So there's no way to originate a RAR file under Linux without using binary-only software, and any other Unix will have to use Linux or Windows emulation to run even that. That makes quite a lot of people look for something else. Roger
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 10:09:16AM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote:
JAR was available in 1996 or so, I think. I still have copies of most of
the archivers and compressors I was playing with in those days... anyone
remember UC2? HA? SAR? ACB?
There do seem to be a lot of compression formats. A quick Google suggests:
ARC, ARC+, PAK, ZIP, LZH, ARJ, UC2, ZOO, DWC, PUT, HYP, LBR, HA, HAP, HPK,
SQZ, SQWEZ, LIM, RAR, MD, BSN, BS2, AIN, SAR, ACB, MAR, CPZ, JRC, JAR, ARX,
Quantum, ReSOF, QuArk, YAC, ChArc, Codec, NuLIB, PAKLeo, AMGC, X1, PSA, ZAR,
LHARK, CPAC, Freeze, KBoom, Crush, NSQ, DPA, TTComp, WWPack-Data, RKV, JAR,
ESP, ZPack, Sky, ARI, UFA, FOXSQZ, AR7, TSComp, PPMZ, MP3, ZET, ARQ, ACE,
Terse, Squash, Stuffit, UHarc, ABComp, CMP, CARComp, LZOP, szip, Splint,
TAR, BA, InstallShield Z and CAB, BOA, ARG, BZ, Gather, QFC, PRO-PACK,
MSXiE, RAX, 777, LZS221, HPA, Arhangel, NRV, oPAQue, BZ2, Squish, MS CAB,
HIT, IMP, NSK, DST, ASD, BTS, TOP4, BatComp (4DOS), BIX, LZA, BLI, CAR,
SARJ, Compack Sfx, LGC, Akt, Akt32, ARS-Sfx, Flash, PC/3270, NPack, PFT,
XTreme, SemOne, InstallIt, PPMD, RK, RPM, XPA32, XPack Data/DImg/SData.
--
# Earle Martin http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EarleMartin
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Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 01:08:54PM +0100, Earle Martin wrote: There do seem to be a lot of compression formats. A quick Google suggests: ... BatComp (4DOS) ... Batcomp isn't a general-purpose compression tool. Its purpose is to transmogrify a batch file (which with 4DOS can be quite sophisticated, almost up to the standards of a Unixy shell script) into a form which is not human-readable but is still executable. IIRC, it tokenises keywords but does nothing else. The resulting file is smaller, true, but it can only compress batch files. This attempt to hide a script's source is about as useful as a chocolate crash-helmet, given that you can download 4decomp from any Simtel mirror. -- David Cantrell | Degenerate | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david 23.5 degrees of axial tilt is the reason for the season
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 01:08:54PM +0100, Earle Martin wrote: [list of compression schemes] To that, add: ?Q? ?Z? Crunch Compress (not the same as Unix compress) RLE -- Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Norton Wipe Info uses hexadecimal values to wipe files. This provides more security than wiping with decimal values. -- from the manual of Norton Systemworks 2002, pg 160
DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s (was Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 09:24:11AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: [re RAR] I'm told it's fairly popular in (some?) Usenet binary newsgroups as a standard way of distributing warez and moviez. ACE is another format that I understand is used in that context. From what I gather, it supports multi-volume archives natively (which are a bit of a hack with the ZIP format); there also exists a PAR scheme which gives parity information so if you miss up to 'n' segments of a multi-segment file, you can recreate them from the parity data. Both correct, though I've never seen PAR actually produce a result. Actually, I've probably known about RAR for longer than most people; in 1994 I translated the documentation for RAR 1.40 from Russian to English, and uploaded it to Garbo. (Three weeks later, Yevgeniy Roshal brought out a new version with his own English translation, which was rather less comprehensible than mine, and didn't bother to answer my email.) Compression is also sometimes better than with ZIP, possibly because of one or both of (a) it's said to have a special multimedia mode that is tuned to compressing audio and/or video (no idea how that works, though) and (b) it can create solid archives (things .tar.gz - compress the files as one rather than compressing each file individually as in .zip, hence you can take advantage of redundancy across files). Also both correct. Multimedia mode, AFAIR, looks for shorter repeated sequences than in text, because there's already been some compression done. RAR used to be practically guaranteed to be smaller than ZIP, but the format has got a bit bulky of late. Basically, it started as state-of-the-art compression code of 1994 and has been updated somewhat since, whereas ZIP is state-of-the-art for early 1992 and basically hasn't changed at all (RAR has now had four or five changes to the file format). In my experience, people who really care about compressed file size and are moderately technically savvy tend to use RAR or ACE; people who want their files to be readable by everybody use ZIP; people who are catering for virus-prone fools use self-installing EXE. (All of this only applies to the Windows world, obviously; I think the parallels in Unix, or at least Linux, would be .tar.bz2, .tar.gz, and dodgy commercial software with auto-extracting installers like the JRE.) Incidentally, I can highly recommend PowerArchiver, even though it's now gone shareware. It's the only archive extractor I use on Windows. I've very rarely come across a file I wanted that was in .RAR format, though. When I started computing in the 90's on PCs, it was LZH at the beginning, replaced by ARJ shortly after I started; now it's ZIP. (And, of course, the perennial .tar.Z / .tar.gz in the *nix world, though .tar.bz2 are starting to show up in a couple of places.) For a while, ARJ was looking set to displace ZIP v2; it was producing consistently smaller files, and had just grown a solid mode (which originated with HPack, but that's another story entirely). But Rob Jung insisted on keeping the source entirely closed, which meant that instead of competing with ZIP as the universal and featureful format it was competing with RAR as the small format, at which it failed. This is probably not relevant for whoever started the thread, though. Neither is anything I've said here. R
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s (was Re: gzipping your websitesWINRAR 40 days trial)
On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Roger Burton West wrote: Both correct, though I've never seen PAR actually produce a result. Download a large enough set of rar component files (as in grabbing Buffy each week) and you'll soon find how useful par files are. Jason Clifford -- UKFSN.ORG Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net http://www.ukfsn.org/ ADSL Broadband available now
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s (was Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my experience, people who really care about compressed file size and are moderately technically savvy tend to use RAR or ACE; people who want their files to be readable by everybody use ZIP; people who are catering for virus-prone fools use self-installing EXE. I don't actually mind .EXE files so long as I don't have to run them. If you can just extract from them using the standard unzip program, I don't have a problem with that. -Dom -- | Semantico: creators of major online resources | | URL: http://www.semantico.com/ | | Tel: +44 (1273) 72 | | Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On 2 Sep 2003 at 9:43, Roger Burton West wrote: On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 09:24:11AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: When I started computing in the 90's on PCs, it was LZH at the beginning, replaced by ARJ shortly after I started; now it's ZIP. (And, of course, the perennial .tar.Z / .tar.gz in the *nix world, though .tar.bz2 are starting to show up in a couple of places.) For a while, ARJ was looking set to displace ZIP v2; it was producing consistently smaller files, and had just grown a solid mode (which originated with HPack, but that's another story entirely). That's certainly what it looked like to me in the early-mid 90's (my BBS/mailboxing days: roughly 1992-1994), where ARJ appeared to be the most popular compressed format by far. (Though my favourite mailbox switched over to SQZ due to its slightly better compression, I don't think that format ever became widespread.) I was away from computers for about 1995-1997 and was a bit surprised on my return to find that ZIP appeared to have taken over from ARJ. I can well imagine that the availability of Info-ZIP may have been part of this; another part is probably the advent of Win95 and WinZIP, which brought compression to the pointy-clicky masses. (ARJ and PKZIP had both been 16-bit command-line DOS programs, though there was third-pary software called ARJMENU which gave you a text-mode full-screen interface to ARJ, and I think PKZIP later came up with a 32-bit graphical version of their software.) But Rob Jung insisted on keeping the source entirely closed, which meant that instead of competing with ZIP as the universal and featureful format it was competing with RAR as the small format, at which it failed. I think it stood a decent chance at featureful if not universal; it certainly had a ton of features, which got more and more with each version. Compression was roughly the same, but ARJ was the first of the two to have multi-volume archives, for example, or backup archives storing multiple versions of the same file (it retrieved the latest version by default but you could ask for any older version as well). I think that by count of features, ARJ was probably more successful. No idea what ARJ is doing these days. They still seem to be around as a company (and have a better format called JAR, apparently), but I haven't seen an ARJ archive in many a day. I doubt they have many sales. This is probably not relevant for whoever started the thread, though. Neither is anything I've said here. But it's been interesting talking about it. -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 10:55:13AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: I can well imagine that the availability of Info-ZIP may have been part of this; another part is probably the advent of Win95 and WinZIP, which brought compression to the pointy-clicky masses. (ARJ and PKZIP had both been 16-bit command-line DOS programs, though there was third-pary software called ARJMENU which gave you a text-mode full-screen interface to ARJ, and I think PKZIP later came up with a 32-bit graphical version of their software.) Yup, but it was more expensive than WinZIP (which of course was based on Info-ZIP) and nagged the user more about registration. ARJ never went graphical at all AFAIK, and neither did JAR. I think it stood a decent chance at featureful if not universal; it certainly had a ton of features, which got more and more with each version. It won on featureful, but that wasn't enough to get it used. Compression was roughly the same, but ARJ was the first of the two to have multi-volume archives, for example, or backup archives storing multiple versions of the same file (it retrieved the latest version by default but you could ask for any older version as well). I think that by count of features, ARJ was probably more successful. And of course it was tested a bit more thoroughly before it was released. Anyone remember PKZip 2.04e? The (plain-text) bug list was longer than the executable... No idea what ARJ is doing these days. They still seem to be around as a company (and have a better format called JAR, apparently), but I haven't seen an ARJ archive in many a day. I doubt they have many sales. JAR was available in 1996 or so, I think. I still have copies of most of the archivers and compressors I was playing with in those days... anyone remember UC2? HA? SAR? ACB? Roger
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On 2 Sep 2003 at 10:09, Roger Burton West wrote: I still have copies of most of the archivers and compressors I was playing with in those days... anyone remember UC2? HA? SAR? ACB? I had a bunch squirrelled away on my old hard drive (125 MB, the luxury). I should have that backed up on CD-R somewhere but I'd have to dig for quite a while. Of those you mentioned, I only ever saw HA. (My version had a bug in that its help output had lines terminated IIRC by CR CR LF, causing it to double-space on my screen unless I piped it through a filter.) A couple of others I had were HAP (and its companion, PAH), SQZ, DWC (by Dean W. Cooper), PKPAK, LHARC, LHA, ICE(?), ZOO, and AR. I don't think I ever saw a DWC or AR archive in the wild, though. ICE was basically a renamed LHA, so that doesn't really count; I think most .lzh were LHA rather than the older LHARC. I didn't come across many .ARC archives either (which PKPAK and ARC created IIRC), but I did see a couple. ZOO appears to be very old indeed (and was even fairly portable, apparently; I saw a description of moving them over to a VMS machine with Kermit, for example). I remember whatever produced .ARC because it produced really bad compression in two ways: didn't squeeze as much out of the file as most other utilities, and the resulting file couldn't be compressed much, either. There were probably tons more that sprung up after my time as well; I remember seeing a compression comparison site with all sorts of apps, though most appeared to be newer (as in, developed in the last six or seven years). Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 09:19:37AM -0400, Chris Devers wrote: JAR? No relation to the Java archive format, is there? None whatsoever - it predated it somewhat as well. I thought that Java's JAR files were just Java-tARballs. Mostly they're Zip-files, actually.. Roger
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Philip Newton wrote: No idea what ARJ is doing these days. They still seem to be around as a company (and have a better format called JAR, apparently) [...] JAR? No relation to the Java archive format, is there? I thought that Java's JAR files were just Java-tARballs. Now you have me wondering if that's actually true. -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://devers.homeip.net:8080/blog/ ALU, n. [Arithritic Logic Unit or (rare) Arithmetic Logic Unit.] A random-number generator supplied as standard on all computer systems. -- from _The Computer Contradictionary_, Stan Kelly-Bootle, 1995
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On 2 Sep 2003 at 9:19, Chris Devers wrote: On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Philip Newton wrote: No idea what ARJ is doing these days. They still seem to be around as a company (and have a better format called JAR, apparently) [...] JAR? No relation to the Java archive format, is there? Correct: no relation. I thought that Java's JAR files were just Java-tARballs. I believe they're basically ZIP files with certain specifically-named members. Or something. But based on ZIP, not TAR. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 10:09:16AM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote: JAR was available in 1996 or so, I think. I still have copies of most of the archivers and compressors I was playing with in those days... anyone remember UC2? HA? SAR? ACB? I remember (and used) UC2 and, I think, HA.. What happened to UC2? tjc -- Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On or about Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 08:02:10AM -0700, Toby Corkindale typed: I remember (and used) UC2 and, I think, HA.. Want a Debian package for HA? (Privately maintained while I wait to have time to do the become-a-developer dance.) What happened to UC2? I think the company went under. They certainly stopped answering email all of a sudden - I was corresponding with them for quite a while. Roger
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On Tue, 02 Sep 2003 14:25, Roger Burton West wrote; I thought that Java's JAR files were just Java-tARballs. Mostly they're Zip-files, actually.. Which makes sense, because .ZIP is a file format with an index at the end designed for random access, whereas .tar files need to be scanned to work out where each file starts and ends. And plain `ar' doesn't do compression. -- Sam Vilain, [EMAIL PROTECTED] What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything ? VINCENT van GOGH
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Sam Vilain wrote: On Tue, 02 Sep 2003 14:25, Roger Burton West wrote; I thought that Java's JAR files were just Java-tARballs. Mostly they're Zip-files, actually.. Which makes sense, because .ZIP is a file format with an index at the end designed for random access, whereas .tar files need to be scanned to work out where each file starts and ends. And plain `ar' doesn't do compression. Neither, in the strictest sense, does tar. S. -- Shevekhttp://www.anarres.org/ I am the Borg. http://www.gothnicity.org/
RE: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s (was Re: gzipping your websitesWINRAR 40 days trial)
On 02 September 2003 09:53 Jason Clifford wrote: On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Roger Burton West wrote: Both correct, though I've never seen PAR actually produce a result. Download a large enough set of rar component files (as in grabbing Buffy each week) and you'll soon find how useful par files are. Or Charmed :) Barbie. -- Barbie (@missbarbell.co.uk) | Birmingham Perl Mongers | http://birmingham.pm.org/
Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s
Roger Burton West wrote: JAR was available in 1996 or so, I think. I still have copies of most of the archivers and compressors I was playing with in those days... anyone remember UC2? HA? SAR? ACB? Not really. I come from a DOS background, where in the late '80s we started out with .arc and .pak, which migrated into .zip pkzip2.04e, yes, I still remember the version number, so it must have been the standard for some time :-) /Robert
