🚀 go-pugleaf

wally@Auspex.COM (Wally Bass) writes:

>The dominant standard, I think, is something that can be decompressed
>with pkunzip 1.10. If someone comes out with something which can't
>be decompressed by pkunzip 1.10, then it is no longer the dominant
>standard. Just because the files produced by this program have
>an extension of 'ZIP' (a disservice, it seems to me, since people
>will mistake these files for files which conform to the dominant
>standard decompression program, namely pkunzip 1.10) and comes from
>the infamous PKWARE software works doesn't mean a thing relative to
>the question of conforming to prevailing standards. pkzip 2.04c is
>fundamentally a new product having little relation to prevailing
>standards, and it should be viewed that way. Or perhaps it should
>be viewed somewhat more negatively, for absolutely destroying
>that 'standard' meaning that we previously could infer from the
>commonly used notion of 'zip file'.
>
Personally, I don't care about the underlaying compression method as
much as I care about the user interface.  I like PKZIP because it
implements the same commands basically all the way back to ARC whereas
with the other programs I always have to look them up....


Billy Barron, VAX/UNIX Systems Manager, University of North Texas
billy@unt.edu, billy@untvax.bitnet, THENET: NTVAX::BILLY