CompuServe Messages

While ARC is the most common and widely used archiving program on the Amiga, there are a few others available. Each has its strong and weak points. We have just had our first upload of a file using a program called PAK, and it's in DL 15, called PLAY.PAK. The program itself is a Sonix music player, documantation for it, and a small utiliy that allows switching out the LED, which disables the low pass audio filters on the A500 and A2000. The author, who is also the author of the PAK program has stated that it may be distributed only in its PAKed form. Because this is a program that many members have been looking for, and because we will not go against the athors distribution requests, we have left it in PAKed form. We would like to hear feedback from the members as to whether we should provide PAKed files (as opposed to ARCed files) in the Data Libraries. PAKed files are simpler than ARCed files. To decompose a PAKed file into its parts, simply download and run the program. In this particular case, you would type PLAY.PAK, and the file will unPAK itself. On the down side, PAKed files tend to be larger than ARCed files by anywhere from 10% to 50% larger. If you have any feelings one way or the other, please respond to this with your opinions. We will try to get a feeling for the consensus and either severely limit the PAKed files or just leave them as uploaded. If the feeling is that PAKed files are OK, we will also provide the PAK program itself. This is your forum. Please feel free to help guide its future. Regards, Larry.