Re: BINSCII on other platforms!

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <3cfs38$2t8t@nic.smsu.edu>,
Lin Shawn R <srl968s@nic.smsu.edu> wrote:
> : Of course, excepting compression methods, ShrinkIt is a better format than
> : PKZip, and is definitely an improvement over tar files.  It's portable,
> : flexible, and expandable.
> 
> What makes ShrinkIt a better format than Zip?  Zip's deflating seems to 
> compress better from what I've seen.

I think the point was that the organisation of the data in the
ShrinkIt (NuFX) file is far more flexible than in a Zip file.  New
compression methods could be implemented within the existing file
structure (in a similar way to ZIP).  The NuFX format allows for
different sorts of data to be stored in the file (e.g. resource forks
or information specific to a file system).

The existing best compression available with ShrinkIt is nowhere near
as good as that offered by ZIP or other compression programs, but this
could be changed if someone could write a new NuFX utility (or get the
source code to all versions of ShrinkIt).

The main advantage of the current ShrinkIt compression method is that
it doesn't need much memory to compress or expand the data, allowing
it to run on a 48k ][+ (for example).  Most high-end compression
methods require much more memory (e.g. Unix COMPRESS needs a 256k
dictionary in the worst case, I think).

If any further development was done on ShrinkIt GS, one possibility
would be to add a better compression method that required ShrinkIt GS
to extract the file again (you wouldn't be able to use the ProDOS-8
version of ShrinkIt, which is pretty maxed out already).  There would
be no problem with this if you were compressing IIgs-specific files,
especially ones with resource forks.

I don't hold high hopes for this happening, though.  Andy Nicholas
appears to have completely vanished from the Apple II world, and is
greatly missed.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand