Hi,
About these compression methods:
It's too bad that (to my knowledge) there's not a single compression
method for MSX machines, for which:
a) Both compressor and de-compressor exist
b) Which are essentially bug-free
c) Can handle about every (un)packing job
PMA: PMarc sometimes produces .PMA files which produce checksum
errors on unpacking, even though they're freshly packed (!), and both
PMarc & Pmext round up file sizes to multiples of 128 bytes (due to
their CP/M origin).
Mostly not that big a problem, but not quite correct, and does cause
problems in some cases.
And...using .PMA files on PC's is very difficult.
LHA: I'd say the best (un)packing method that exists for the MSX
today, but....also has a bug: if files to be (un)packed get really
big (> 1MB or so), packer or unpacker screws up....
(Can someone fix this bug?)
ARJ: There does exists an ARJ unpacker for MSX, but....no packing
program.
ZIP: Yes! Forget about packing, but it sure would be nice if someone
would write a -decent- ZIP unpacking program for the MSX. Say, PKZIP
2.04 compatible, and with support for unpacking directory trees
stored in ZIP's.
For this purpose:
There exists something called the Info-ZIP group, which is kind of a
'collective' (hobbyists like most of you) that maintains a freely
distributable ZIP packer/unpacker.
Goal of this group is to have a free ZIP (un)packer on as many
different systems/platforms as possible (existing versions support
all current ZIP features).
I don't know an exact web-address where this can be found, but:
both the ZIP packer, unpacker, and ALL source-code should be
available on SimTel. I guess you should be able to find that.
(look in the DOS collection, and maybe in some "programming"
directory).
Maybe sometime the MSX system can be added to the list of supported
platforms?
AND YES:
CAN YOU STUPIDS STOP MESSING UP THIS MAILINGLIST WITH THAT
NONSENSE ??!!!
You're right, it's okay to have fun, and yes, MSX is about having fun
with it, but:
If you couple of &%(#'s (cheese-heads?) send 50 e-mails back and
forth with pure nonsense in it, and this mailing-list has, say 100
subscribers, then you've just pumped 5000 totally, absolutely
unnecessary e-mails through the net, produced MB.'s of totally,
absolutely unnecesary, and avoidable network traffic, and...
Bothered every subscriber to this list with 50 e-mails they have to
read, and hit a delete key for one by one, after which they have
learned....NOTHING
Thanks, but no thanks, cut it out!
I greet you,
Alwin Henseler ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://huizen.dds.nl/~alwinh/msx (MSX Tech Doc page)
****
MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put
in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the
quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
****
