🚀 go-pugleaf

Sam Yorko wrote:
>
> Creator of PKZIP.....
>
> http://www.jsonline.com/news/obits/apr00/KatzPhillipW041900.asp
>
The obituary says that Mr. Katz was only 37...  Does anyone have
any idea what happened???  Gee, this is *really* a shock!

Correct me if I am wrong (*not* that I ever thought you wouldn't),
but did Phil Katz originate the ARC compression program also???
My misundersanding was that he created PKZIP to counter all the BS
created by Unisys charging royalties over the patent with the LZW
compression algorithm.  (Personally, I think that patenting
algorithms is a load of crap...and the free-for-all and misuse
of this has created absurd circumstances.  I heard that someone
actually patented the exclusive-or technique for moving graphics
images along in a bitmapped display.  Total crap!!!)

Also, throughout history, many great and creative men have died
fairly young...like Motzart, Raphael, Blaise Pascal, etc.  Does
anyone have a theory of why this trend occurs???


--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Charles and Francis Richmond     <richmond@plano.net>   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

In article <3901648B.B00921CC@dallas.net>, richmond@dallas.net wrote:

> Correct me if I am wrong (*not* that I ever thought you wouldn't),
> but did Phil Katz originate the ARC compression program also???

No, he created PKARC.

> My misundersanding was that he created PKZIP to counter all the BS
> created by Unisys charging royalties over the patent with the LZW
> compression algorithm.  (Personally, I think that patenting

Wrong.  He created PKZIP because the guy behind the shareware (?) ARC
program sued him either over the use of the letters "ARC" in the name
"PKARC", or because it was compatible, or maybe both.

So, since ARC's algorithm wasn't so hot to begin with, he came up with the
incompatible but better PKZIP format, buring ARC in the sands of computer
folklore, and that's why I can't remember the name of the guy behind the
ARC format.  Just about everybody who can run MSDOS executables has a copy
of PKZIP 2.04g somewhere, whether they use it or not.

I never heard anything about him having a problem with gzip and WinZip,
but it would have been bad karma if he sued anybody about it, considering
PKZIP's origins.

So now what becomes of PKWARE?  I'm sure it's a "real" company by now,
with real employees who can keep it running.  The web site is still
there.  And on the web site there's even a 2.50 for DOS which supports
Windoze long file names, and DPMI 32bit.

Charles Richmond <richmond@dallas.net> wrote:

>Also, throughout history, many great and creative men have died
>fairly young...like Motzart, Raphael, Blaise Pascal, etc.  Does
>anyone have a theory of why this trend occurs???

Many great and creative people have also died fairly old, and
many great and creative people have died in middle age.  I don't
see any great mystery.

--
john

Charles Richmond <richmond@dallas.net> wrote:
> Also, throughout history, many great and creative men have died
> fairly young...like Motzart, Raphael, Blaise Pascal, etc.  Does
> anyone have a theory of why this trend occurs???

We don't remember the mediocre ones who died young. We also don't
specially remember the great ones who died of old age. So this is
a case of selective memory. Carl Sagan mentioned this fallacy in
one of his books (Broca's Brain).

BTW, your observation was made at least 2300 years ago. See my .sig.

--
http://www.mat.uc.pt/~rps/f1/	an half-tifoso until Canada 2000
	Mark Sandman - Morphine, RIP (1952-1999/07/03, Italy)
pt is Portugal| `Whom the gods love die young'-Menander (342-292 BC)
        Europe |    Villeneuve 50-82, Toivonen 56-86, Senna 60-94

Bruce Tomlin wrote:
>
> In article <3901648B.B00921CC@dallas.net>, richmond@dallas.net wrote:
>
> > Correct me if I am wrong (*not* that I ever thought you wouldn't),
> > but did Phil Katz originate the ARC compression program also???
>
> No, he created PKARC.
>
> > My misundersanding was that he created PKZIP to counter all the BS
> > created by Unisys charging royalties over the patent with the LZW
> > compression algorithm.  (Personally, I think that patenting
>
> Wrong.  He created PKZIP because the guy behind the shareware (?) ARC
> program sued him either over the use of the letters "ARC" in the name
> "PKARC", or because it was compatible, or maybe both.

The company that owned arc was System Enhancement Associates, or words
to that effect.  SEA claimed that they owned the file extension .arc.  I
also recall that the story at the time was that pkarc contained code
stolen from SEA's arc.

Todd Larason wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Apr 2000 14:23:25 GMT, Thomas M. Sommers <tms2@mail.ptd.net> wrote:
> >The company that owned arc was System Enhancement Associates, or words
> >to that effect.  SEA claimed that they owned the file extension .arc.  I
> >also recall that the story at the time was that pkarc contained code
> >stolen from SEA's arc.
>
> My memory is that .arc was a directory format which could use several
> different compression techniques, the best of which was a straight
> port of the UNIX Compress (lzw) format.  It also had a huffman coder,
> apparely directly ported from the older SQ/USQ utilities.  PKARC was
> compatible, but much faster.
>
> I'm pretty sure Mr. Katz never had any problems with the Info-Zip and
> gzip people; from the earliest versions of pkzip, there was a
> technotes file distributed with the executable that documented both
> the file format and the deflation compression method.  The file format
> included indicators for what platform the files were from, and I don't
> recall there being any indication PK was interested in porting pkzip
> to all the defined platforms himself.

  I just checked the old EXEC-PC BB (still up by the way) And there is a bunch of
info on the suit.  Too much to post here but this letter from the BB operator kind
of summarizes it.
  I downloaded most of the files, copies of court docs and some commentary on
usenet at the time, so if anyone is interested email me.
charles

---A STATEMENT FROM THE EXEC-PC BBS CONCERNING THE RECENT SEA VS PKWARE SUIT

This entire statement was authored by and is the opinion of Bob Mahoney.

I STRONGLY URGE OTHER SYSOPS TO TAKE ACTION SIMILAR TO THAT OUTLINED BELOW.


Throughout this statement, the character string "xxx" will be used in
place of the three letters that have become the topic of much legal
action.  I will avoid using those letters for fear of a suit from SEA,
who is currently defending their exclusive right to the use of such letters.

The three letters are typically used as the extension on a filename of
a compressed file.

When SEA came out with the xxx format, I banned it from the Exec-PC BBS
because the xxxing and unxxxing programs from SEA were too darn slow.  As
soon as PKware released the super fast PKXxxx and PKxxx programs, I approved
the xxx format for the Exec-PC BBS because processing the xxx file format
on the typical computer of the time (4.77 mhz PC) was no longer a test
of user endurance and patience.  The speed of the PKware products made the
xxx format a valid format.

Now that the SEA vs PKware suit has confused all of us, angered many of
us, and has brought the issue to the forefront, it is time for some decisions.

Exec-PC has decided the following:  As soon as PKware brings out a new
format for creating crunched/squeezed/squashed/packed/tramped collections
of files, that new format will be used for ALL files on the Exec-PC BBS.
At last count Exec-PC had more than 16,000 files online in the xxx format.

Many sysops are nervous about the amount of work required to convert to
a new format.  I don't understand what the problem is.  A simple batch file
can be created for unxxxing all the old files, then rePAKing them into the
new format.

SUMMARY:  Watch for the new file compression format on Exec-PC.
The simple evolutionary process that brought us the SQUEEZED file, then
the LBR file, then the xxx file will soon take one more predictable step.
SEA has left their mark, but the nagging embarrassment of threats and
lawsuits has given the market a reason to evolve to the next level of file
compression sooner than expected.

Bob Mahoney  Exec-PC multi-user BBS  414-964-5160     8/29/88


On Sat, 22 Apr 2000 14:23:25 GMT, Thomas M. Sommers <tms2@mail.ptd.net> wrote:
>The company that owned arc was System Enhancement Associates, or words
>to that effect.  SEA claimed that they owned the file extension .arc.  I
>also recall that the story at the time was that pkarc contained code
>stolen from SEA's arc.

My memory is that .arc was a directory format which could use several
different compression techniques, the best of which was a straight
port of the UNIX Compress (lzw) format.  It also had a huffman coder,
apparely directly ported from the older SQ/USQ utilities.  PKARC was
compatible, but much faster.

I'm pretty sure Mr. Katz never had any problems with the Info-Zip and
gzip people; from the earliest versions of pkzip, there was a
technotes file distributed with the executable that documented both
the file format and the deflation compression method.  The file format
included indicators for what platform the files were from, and I don't
recall there being any indication PK was interested in porting pkzip
to all the defined platforms himself.

"Thomas M. Sommers" wrote:
>
>      [snip...]     [snip...]     [snip..]
>
> The company that owned arc was System Enhancement Associates, or words
> to that effect.  SEA claimed that they owned the file extension .arc.  I
> also recall that the story at the time was that pkarc contained code
> stolen from SEA's arc.
>
Hmmm...very interesting indeed.  So how about the version of arc that was
released into <comp.sources.unix>???  It is C source code and supposedly
compiles a version of arc that will run under Unix SVR4...  Does SEA have
a problem with this version also???

--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Charles and Francis Richmond     <richmond@plano.net>   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

Charles Richmond <richmond@dallas.net> wrote:

> The obituary says that Mr. Katz was only 37...  Does anyone have
> any idea what happened???  Gee, this is *really* a shock!

A full story is at
<URL:http://www.jsonline.com/wi/042200/wi%2D%2Dsoftwarepioneer04220015412.asp>

In case that is one of those short-lived URLs (and for those who
dislike stories that tell you more than you wanted to know, I suggest
you skip this one), the short version is that he lost a fight with
alcoholism.

In article <slrn8g44jp.rdl.jtl@nano.priv.molehill.org>,
Todd Larason <jtl@molehill.org> wrote:
>On Sat, 22 Apr 2000 14:23:25 GMT, Thomas M. Sommers <tms2@mail.ptd.net> wrote:
>>The company that owned arc was System Enhancement Associates, or words
>>to that effect.  SEA claimed that they owned the file extension .arc.  I
>>also recall that the story at the time was that pkarc contained code
>>stolen from SEA's arc.
>
>My memory is that .arc was a directory format which could use several
>different compression techniques, the best of which was a straight
>port of the UNIX Compress (lzw) format.

That's correct (although I don't know whether the compression code was
a port of compress --- I never looked at it).

>It also had a huffman coder,
>apparely directly ported from the older SQ/USQ utilities.  PKARC was
>compatible, but much faster.

PKARC/PKXARC was called PKPAK/PKUNPAK at one point --- possibly because
of the lawsuit.

>I'm pretty sure Mr. Katz never had any problems with the Info-Zip and
>gzip people; from the earliest versions of pkzip, there was a
>technotes file distributed with the executable that documented both
>the file format and the deflation compression method.  The file format
>included indicators for what platform the files were from, and I don't
>recall there being any indication PK was interested in porting pkzip
>to all the defined platforms himself.

By the way, .zip is also a "directory format" with several different
compression techniques available.  I seem to recall that ARJ and LZH
compressed better than PKZIP did for several years, presumably because
PKZIP wasn't using the LZ77 "deflate" compression yet.
--
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
The Internet stock bubble didn't burst on 1999-11-08.  Hurrah!
<URL:http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/bubble.html>
The power didn't go out on 2000-01-01 either.  :)

Charles Richmond <richmond@dallas.net> wrote:
> Correct me if I am wrong (*not* that I ever thought you wouldn't),
> but did Phil Katz originate the ARC compression program also???

He wrote an arc-compatible program called pkarc.  SEA, who wrote
the original arc, gave him a lot of legal headaches about it.
This led him to create pkzip, and explicitly give the file
format to the public domain.

> Also, throughout history, many great and creative men have died
> fairly young...like Motzart, Raphael, Blaise Pascal, etc.  Does
> anyone have a theory of why this trend occurs???

I think we may just notice it more, and be drawn to the
thought "and what would he have done in his later life?"
I remember trying to figure out in my mind how Mozart's
music would have changed if he had lived.

Rgds,
Mark.

--
Mark Harrison                     markh@usai.asiainfo.com
AsiaInfo Computer Networks        http://www.markharrison.net
Beijing / Santa Clara             http://usai.asiainfo.com:8080

John Varela <javarel@earthlink.net> wrote:
> That brings back memories.  The outrage on the BBSes over SEA's
> lawsuit was so fierce and retribution so swift and total!

Much like the fierce backlash against Unisys and compress.  The
interesting thing is that both of these legal things actually
did cause progress to be made in the computing field.

If SEA hadn't done their thing, then ZIP would not have replaced
ARC in such a quick manner, and if Unisys hadn't done their
thing then gzip would not have replaced compress so quickly.

FWIW,
Mark.

--
Mark Harrison                     markh@usai.asiainfo.com
AsiaInfo Computer Networks        http://www.markharrison.net
Beijing / Santa Clara             http://usai.asiainfo.com:8080

javarel@earthlink.net (John Varela) writes:

>On Sun, 23 Apr 2000 01:51:12, chascav <chascav@maqs.net> wrote:

>> Too much to post here but this letter from the BB operator kind
>> of summarizes it.

>That brings back memories.  The outrage on the BBSes over SEA's
>lawsuit was so fierce and retribution so swift and total!

Speaking of which, is SEA still in business?  When the computer
community tossed ARC-based compression because of the absurd
claim that SEA "owned" the .ARC extension (a claim upheld by an
equally absurd court that ruled in SEA's favor) the company
faded from view.  From the time that the outrage over the verdict
died down until this thread appeared to report Phil's death I don't
think that I've seen any references to the company aside from a
couple of postings here on a.f.c.

Joe Morris

In article <hee2e8.70d.ln@swbackup.sw.asiainfo.com>,
markh@usai.asiainfo.com wrote:
>John Varela <javarel@earthlink.net> wrote:

>> That brings back memories.  The outrage on the BBSes over SEA's
>> lawsuit was so fierce and retribution so swift and total!

> Much like the fierce backlash against Unisys and compress.  The
> interesting thing is that both of these legal things actually
> did cause progress to be made in the computing field.
>
> If SEA hadn't done their thing, then ZIP would not have replaced
> ARC in such a quick manner, and if Unisys hadn't done their
> thing then gzip would not have replaced compress so quickly.

Too bad the PNG revolution over GIF is taking so long.  I worry that PNG
won't be able to take the ground by the 2003 deadline (expiry of Unisys'
patent in the US).

--
 --     ---                          <greg@apple2.com>
  --   -- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------
   -- --   ---              <http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/>
    ---

Oh whoa, he was PK? I never knew why it was called PKZip and PKware,
and I've been using it for a good few years. Yow.

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

"Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in
                                                    life you'd like to"

  - - - - - - - - greenaum@yahoo.co.uk

Call me morbid, call me pale

               - http://www.sam-x.freeuk.com/chest1.jpg

In article <8e1fen$1q8$1@top.mitre.org>,
Joe Morris <jcmorris@jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG> wrote:
>javarel@earthlink.net (John Varela) writes:

>> That brings back memories.  The outrage on the BBSes over SEA's
>> lawsuit was so fierce and retribution so swift and total!

> Speaking of which, is SEA still in business?  When the computer
> community tossed ARC-based compression because of the absurd claim
> that SEA "owned" the .ARC extension (a claim upheld by an equally
> absurd court that ruled in SEA's favor) the company faded from view.
> From the time that the outrage over the verdict died down until this
> thread appeared to report Phil's death I don't think that I've seen
> any references to the company aside from a couple of postings here
> on a.f.c.

Around about 1990, I did hear of SEA as selling DOS install-from-diskette
programs to software companies, using a proprietary ARC 7 file format
(which was not compatible with earlier publicly-available versions of
ARC); I think I did come across one of those SEA ARC 7 files once, though
I can't remember in what context...

By the way, the settlment beteen PKWare and SEA specified that PKWare
was to release only one further version of its PKARC programs
(i.e. that dealt with ARC format files), but under the name PKPAK
instead of PKARC (this was PKPAK 3.61).  When Phil Katz created the
ZIP format, he specified that the .ZIP file format would always be in
the public domain.

--
Henry Churchyard   churchh@usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/

In article <8e427h$o9s$1@top.mitre.org>,
   jcmorris@jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG (Joe Morris) wrote:
>javarel@earthlink.net (John Varela) writes:
>
>>On Mon, 24 Apr 2000 12:41:59, jcmorris@jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG (Joe
>>Morris) wrote:
>
>>	<stuff>
>
>>Welcome back.  Where have you been?
>
>Lurking.  Also trying (unsuccessfully) to keep management in line.  I'll
>let you guess how successful I've been...

<grin>  And to think you come here for a fresh breath of
sanity.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

javarel@earthlink.net (John Varela) writes:

>On Mon, 24 Apr 2000 12:41:59, jcmorris@jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG (Joe
>Morris) wrote:

>	<stuff>

>Welcome back.  Where have you been?

Lurking.  Also trying (unsuccessfully) to keep management in line.  I'll
let you guess how successful I've been...

Joe

In article <XbtM4.953$RM6.1073740@news-east.usenetserver.com>,
	kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) writes:
[...]
> By the way, .zip is also a "directory format" with several different
> compression techniques available.  I seem to recall that ARJ and LZH
> compressed better than PKZIP did for several years, presumably because
> PKZIP wasn't using the LZ77 "deflate" compression yet.

Even today, a tar file compressed with gzip will outperform ZIP. The
crucial factor is that ZIP stores its metainformation uncompressed, and
for archives with lots of files in them, the directory can get quite big.
Of course, this technique does allow you to do things like extract single
files from an archive without decompressing the whole thing, but it should
have been possible for various key data structures to be usefully
compressed without losing this ability.

--
+- David Given ---------------McQ-+ Two atoms run into each other walking down
|  Work: dg@tao-group.com         | the street. One says, "Are you all right?"
|  Play: dgiven@iname.com         | "No, I lost an electron!" "Are you sure?"
+- http://wired.st-and.ac.uk/~dg -+ "Yeah, I'm positive!"

In article <sp94e8.d4f.ln@127.0.0.1>, David Given <dg@pearl.tao.co.uk> wrote:

> a tar file compressed with gzip will outperform ZIP. The crucial
> factor is that ZIP stores its metainformation uncompressed, and for
> archives with lots of files in them, the directory can get quite
> big.  Of course, this technique does allow you to do things like
> extract single files from an archive without decompressing the whole
> thing, but it should have been possible for various key data
> structures to be usefully compressed without losing this ability.

Actually, this is generally _not_ the most important reason why a
*.tar.gz is smaller than a *.zip.  The main reason for this usually is
that in a .tar.gz the compression algorithm can operate across
multiple files (instead of handling each individual file as an
isolated unit).  I hear that it's the same with "solid" RAR archives.
The main disadvantage with the "solid" approach is that every time you
want to delete a file from within an already-created archive, you not
only have to decompress everything, you have to recompress most of it
from scratch.

For the .ZIP format, merely compressing metadata -- without allowing
the compression algorithm to span multiple files -- wouldn't result in
very much file space saving, while leaving metadata uncompressed adds
redundancy that helps in recovering data from damaged/corrupted ZIP
archive files...

--
Henry Churchyard   churchh@usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/

> Wrong.  He created PKZIP because the guy behind the shareware (?) ARC
> program sued him either over the use of the letters "ARC" in the name
> "PKARC", or because it was compatible, or maybe both.
>
> So, since ARC's algorithm wasn't so hot to begin with, he came up with the
> incompatible but better PKZIP format, buring ARC in the sands of computer
> folklore, and that's why I can't remember the name of the guy behind the
> ARC format.  Just about everybody who can run MSDOS executables has a copy
> of PKZIP 2.04g somewhere, whether they use it or not.

That is why I consider patents to be the kiss of death, at least in the
software world.  I don't know if ARC was actually patented, but experience
has shown many times that if you attempt to stifle clones and
interoperability, you doom yourself.

On Tue, 25 Apr 2000 15:23:56 +0100, dg@pearl.tao.co.uk (David Given)
wrote:

>In article <XbtM4.953$RM6.1073740@news-east.usenetserver.com>,
>	kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) writes:
>[...]
>> By the way, .zip is also a "directory format" with several different
>> compression techniques available.  I seem to recall that ARJ and LZH
>> compressed better than PKZIP did for several years, presumably because
>> PKZIP wasn't using the LZ77 "deflate" compression yet.
>
I've had my system down for a while, could someone please send me
(personally - I don't want to get into the fight of who compresses
better) inf on the death of Phil Katz

				dmr

In article <hee2e8.70d.ln@swbackup.sw.asiainfo.com>,
 <markh@usai.asiainfo.com> wrote:
>John Varela <javarel@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> That brings back memories.  The outrage on the BBSes over SEA's
>> lawsuit was so fierce and retribution so swift and total!
>
>Much like the fierce backlash against Unisys and compress.  The
>interesting thing is that both of these legal things actually
>did cause progress to be made in the computing field.

Unisys has an advantage over SEA.  SEA was dependent on individual
customers; Unisys sells primarily to big businesses, who tend not to
lash fiercely except when it might make them money.

Unisys's 10-K is almost silent on the question of how much money the
company derives from patents, but patent revenue is very different from
SEA's revenue: it's not dependent on customers.

A patent is, more or less by definition, a government-granted monopoly
on some field of endeavor, large or small; its existence may persuade
others not to try to make money in that field, but if they are making
money in the field your patent covers, they must pay you, even if they
think you have a nasty underarm odor.

So I wouldn't worry too much about fierce backlashes against IBM,
Unisys, Priceline, Amazon, and other patent robbers.  They'll cry all
the way to the bank unless we change the laws.
--
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
The Internet stock bubble didn't burst on 1999-11-08.  Hurrah!
<URL:http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/bubble.html>
The power didn't go out on 2000-01-01 either.  :)

In article <8e59uc$if$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>,
Michael A. Covington <See http://www.covingtoninnovations.com for e-mail address> wrote:
>That is why I consider patents to be the kiss of death, at least in the
>software world.  I don't know if ARC was actually patented, but experience
>has shown many times that if you attempt to stifle clones and
>interoperability, you doom yourself.

It wasn't patented.  It would be if it happened today, and bloodsucking
parasites like SEA would have thrived.

If you attempt to stifle clones and interoperability, you hurt your
customers badly.  If they have another choice, they will be inclined to
take it.

Patents are a different ballgame from things like ARC.  Patents, by
definition, preclude customers turning to a competitor --- you can get
a Lempel-Ziv-Welch compressor licensed by Unisys, or you can not get
one at all.  As far as I know, there is no other compression algorithm
that matches LZW's relatively-high compression and extreme speed,
despite decades of research.

In the LZW case, we got lucky --- LZ77 wasn't patented, and although
it's much slower, it's fast enough in most cases.  (Especially now that
hardware is so much faster.)

We may not get lucky next time.  With MP3, we're already pretty
unlucky, although Vorbis looks like a potential solution for the
future.

Some patents cover an area that's so trivial that it can easily be
avoided; others, like some of Priceline's patents, promise to control
whole industries --- or what would be whole industries if not for the
patents, but will instead be lucrative monopolies for Priceline.

Ooh, pardon my vitriol.  I'm a bit upset, I guess you can see.
--
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
The Internet stock bubble didn't burst on 1999-11-08.  Hurrah!
<URL:http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/bubble.html>
The power didn't go out on 2000-01-01 either.  :)

In article <h3tbgskfra7a52jrshqdafejn8ud8ttisa@4ax.com>,
David Razler <david.razler@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> could someone please send me
> (personally - I don't want to get into the fight of who compresses
> better) inf on the death of Phil Katz

http://www.jsonline.com/wi/042200/wi--softwarepioneer04220015412.asp

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/pkzip000422.html

http://www.pkware.com

Simon.
--
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk | _Microsoft_ is going to write the software
No junk email please.          | that spies on me? I feel better already.
                               |                         -- John D. Goulden

On Mon, 24 Apr 2000 12:47:10 -0500, greg@apple2.com sprachen:

>Too bad the PNG revolution over GIF is taking so long.  I worry that PNG
>won't be able to take the ground by the 2003 deadline (expiry of Unisys'
>patent in the US).

So by 2003 we can all use GIFs again anyway? What's the point?

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

"Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in
                                                    life you'd like to"

  - - - - - - - - greenaum@yahoo.co.uk

Call me morbid, call me pale

               - http://www.sam-x.freeuk.com/chest1.jpg

In article <slrn8g44jp.rdl.jtl@nano.priv.molehill.org>, Todd Larason wrote:

>I'm pretty sure Mr. Katz never had any problems with the Info-Zip and
>gzip people; from the earliest versions of pkzip, there was a
>technotes file distributed with the executable that documented both
>the file format and the deflation compression method.  The file format
>included indicators for what platform the files were from, and I don't
>recall there being any indication PK was interested in porting pkzip
>to all the defined platforms himself.

But some PKZIP clones don't support all the options that PKZIP offers, I
think.  (There are the various compression formats, as well as things like
encryption and spanning.)  I wonder if the clone authros are just being lazy
or if they don't have all the documentation they need.

ObAFC:  There are even ZIP programs for 8-bit machines, though they tend to
be very limited (like only supporting the "deflate" method and a few
options).

-- Derek

In article <sp94e8.d4f.ln@127.0.0.1>, David Given <dg@pearl.tao.co.uk>
wrote:
> Even today, a tar file compressed with gzip will outperform ZIP.

Sometimes.  I find that the original pkzip will generally outperform
tar.gz, which will generally outperform info-zip.
	Of course, tar.bz2 leaves them all in the dust.  And I have yet to
deduce exactly where lha, arj, rar, yabba, and so forth fit in...

--
Matthew W. Miller -- mattm@infinet.com

On 29 Apr 2000 20:38:50 GMT, Derek Peschel <dpeschel@eskimo.com> wrote:
>But some PKZIP clones don't support all the options that PKZIP offers, I
>think.  (There are the various compression formats, as well as things like
>encryption and spanning.)

Info-Zip supports encryption and various obscure pkzip compression methods
(in the latter case, unzip only, not zip), but binary distributions
generally have these left off for legal reasons.  Use the source, Luke!
You'll have to get a secondary source distro called zcrypt*.zip in order
to use encryption, but it's worth it.
--
Matthew W. Miller -- mattm@infinet.com

Louis RAPHAEL wrote:
>
> Matthew W. Miller <mattm@infinet.com> wrote:
>
> : Sometimes.  I find that the original pkzip will generally outperform
> : tar.gz, which will generally outperform info-zip.
> :       Of course, tar.bz2 leaves them all in the dust.  And I have yet to
> : deduce exactly where lha, arj, rar, yabba, and so forth fit in...
>
> ARJ used to be better than ZIP, if I remember. I wonder what happened
> to it? It was very popular for a while on the BBS scene, (empirically)
> supplanting ZIP, and then ZIP came back.
>
> What I like about all these programs is that they settled into final
> versions (of the algorithm) reasonably quickly, and haven't changed
> after that... for example, ftp://ftp.pkware.com/pkz204g.exe dates from
> 1993 (I think), and still works perfectly well on newer files...

Few (maybe none?) of the Zip implementations in existence deal with
files over 2 Gigabytes.  For users of toy computers, this doesn't
matter much because lots of "modern" OS's (including many Unices,
notably 80x86 Linux) go seriously haywire when you try to make a
file that large anyway.

Tim.

Matthew W. Miller <mattm@infinet.com> wrote:

: Sometimes.  I find that the original pkzip will generally outperform
: tar.gz, which will generally outperform info-zip.
: 	Of course, tar.bz2 leaves them all in the dust.  And I have yet to
: deduce exactly where lha, arj, rar, yabba, and so forth fit in...

ARJ used to be better than ZIP, if I remember. I wonder what happened
to it? It was very popular for a while on the BBS scene, (empirically)
supplanting ZIP, and then ZIP came back.

What I like about all these programs is that they settled into final
versions (of the algorithm) reasonably quickly, and haven't changed
after that... for example, ftp://ftp.pkware.com/pkz204g.exe dates from
1993 (I think), and still works perfectly well on newer files...

Louis

Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> wrote:

: Few (maybe none?) of the Zip implementations in existence deal with
: files over 2 Gigabytes.  For users of toy computers, this doesn't
: matter much because lots of "modern" OS's (including many Unices,
: notably 80x86 Linux) go seriously haywire when you try to make a
: file that large anyway.

BTW, when I said "newer files" I meant "files zipped with new version
of zip-type programs"...

I vaguely remember seeing something in AIX about "large file" support
in newer releases of AIX, for files 2+ GB. I never concerned myself
with it, as we don't have files that large, but it's nice to know it's
there, I guess.

Louis

Matthew W. Miller <mattm@infinet.com> wrote:

> Info-Zip supports encryption and various obscure pkzip compression methods

Not to mention VMS file records. It's quite useful when transfering save sets
over FTP.

Concerning bzip2, it's goal is better compression on average.  In some cases,
it will do worse than gzip. I think small files in particular it doesn't do
so well on (< 100k)

jeremy