Re: Wolfenstein 3D levels

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <19980302043301.XAA25228@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:
>.sit is a proprietary format and .zip is not?  I thought .zip was also
>a proprietary format.

   Correct. The spec for .zip is published, so that anyone wanting to
make their own decompressor can. Drop by
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/ for a 3rd party implementation that
includes pointers full src code that anyone can port. [With usual
restrictions like requiring full credit given to authors, etc]

>There's also the problem of extended files.  If not .sit, how are
>you going to store an extended file?

   In a publically documented file format that handles extended files.
Mac BinHex does extended files, but *isn't* proprietary and others can
make their own decompressors. It SHOULD be the same way for most Mac
archives, and especially for anything that's on a publically available
software site. My problem is not necessarily with .sit; it is with its
proprietary format. If .sit dox were available so that others could
write decompressors, that'd be great and solve this problem. Or, if
another format was developed that had freely available specs, same
thing.

>It is just that for Mac users, there is no real choice.

   Why don't you get educated better about data transfers and demand
something more suitable to public xfers? There's gotta be someone with
a clue programming them, I hope.

>Why do .sit decoders break so often but .zip decoders don't?  .zip
>is a proprietary format of pkZip, right?  Do they just don't update it
>as much?

   Initially developed by pkZip, but uses standard LZW compression
(same as in .gif) so any good reference on compression should have the
specs. From there, it's a simple matter of a little header for table
of contents and each file and possibly some other stuff. Not rocket
science by a long shot.

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? -R.A. Heinlein