PKARC

[Jim Frost]

In article <4671 at ozdaltx.UUCP> root at ozdaltx.UUCP (Scotty) writes:
>If you are using PKARC, you might give some serious
>consideration to going back to the Standard ARC.  I talked
>with Thom Henderson today of S E A who authored ARC and they
>are getting complaints about PKARC not being system
>compatable (backwards) with ARC.  PKARC is in violation of
>S E A's copywrite.  Also the authors of PKARC won't release
>the code so that it can be ported to other systems, (CPM,
>*NIX, etc.)

>From what I remember about PKARC/PKXARC, they were a complete rewrite
(I thought in assembly language) of the ARC utility.  If this is the
case, they are not in violation of the SEA ARC copyright, since they
could not have used the source.  I'd say that it's unlikely that they
are in violation -- otherwise, how could there be THAT much of a
performance increase?  I could see 20-50% increase in performance for
fine-tuning, but it takes real effort to hit 200%+.

As for backwards compatibility, it is simple enough to repack a pkarc
file to eliminate squashed files (which I believe are what's different
between the two programs).  For my personal archives, I like the idea
of another form of compression.  Putting 30Mb of source/executables on
floppies is not fun -- I appreciate any help I can get, and that extra
compression technique could add up to fewer floppies.

BTW, does anyone have the documentation file with PKARC (any version,
although 3.5 is best) unpacked?  My only copy is in a self-extracting
archive and (wouldn't you know it) I don't have a PC handy.  If you
have the doc file, please email it to me.

jim frost
madd at bu-it.bu.edu