🚀 go-pugleaf

draphsor@elaine5.stanford.edu (Matt Rollefson) writes:
> johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu writes:
> >forward way; it only makes sense that the author of Compactor would
> >incorporate this information in a straight-forward way.
> 
> I'm sorry, you're wrong here, at least for CatStuff. It states quite
> clearly in the stack that the author of CatStuff asked for, and
> received, information about the format of Compactor archives directly
> from the author of Compactor, Bill Goodman...

I disagree somewhat with your interpretation.  I believe that Bill Goodman
would be more than willing to disclose header-type information for
incorporation into programs like FileList and CatStuff; this information should
not be hard to deduce anyway and disclosing it doesn't give an advantage to
your competitors.  On the other hand, in light of what I have heard about his
negotations with CompuServe, he seems to be reluctant to disclose the actual
compression format with which the files in the archive are compressed or
decompressed (typically, the filenames, orig. and compressed sizes, etc. of the
compressed files are stored in plaintext (uncompressed) in the data fork of the
archive file).  Perhaps a good way to put it would be to say that the archive
format is known, but the compression format is still not.

Disclaimer:  This is mostly speculation on my part.

-Vincent Del Vecchio
vd09@andrew.cmu.edu
#include "stdsig.h"