> > On Oct 28, 2:06pm in "Re: Re: Bob's amazing hard-drive plans...", you > warbled: > > ] > LHARC could be used to do that much simpler and in less space and in one > ] > process! > ] > ] I don't know what LHARC is. Why is there such a large variety of file > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > ] formats around (lbr, arc/ark, lha, hqx, zip, zoo, lzh, several forms > ] of lzw, tar, ...)? It seems that every time someone wants to archive > ] something they invent a new format for it instead of using one of the > ] commonly available ones. Anyway, the compression rate of ".tar.gz" is > ] hard to beat, so if you want to make everyone use lharc you'd better be > ] sure of what you are doing... > > Ok... first off, lharc is basically the old version of lha, which also > incorporates lzh files. > > The main reason most people invent a new compression utility is because they > want to use a specific type of data compression. There's no point in using the > Lempel-Ziv compression technique to compress .gif files, for example, you > might end up with something bigger than what you started with... if you > use .jpg compression, however, you'll get massive reduction in size.
Why would you want to use LZW-compression on an already LZW-like compression???? > > lha can be better even than gzip -9 in some cases. It all depends on what > you want to compress, and how you want to be able to retrieve it. For text, it's very difficult to beat gzip. > > gzip is clumsy simply _because_ for an archive you have to use tar/shar. lha > takes that necessity away. tar has the option -z witch makes it much more useable.... -- * Frode Tennebo * It's better to live life in * * email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * wealth and die poor, than live * * phone: +47 712 57716 * life in poverty and die rich. * * snail: Parkv. 31, 6400 Molde, NORWAY * -Frode Tennebo*
