CompuServe Messages

Yet another AB thot: The inclusion of LAR & ARC in the compression bytes seems too ambitious to me. Since these are multi-file formats in themselves, I feel they should be left to the user to unpack. Personally, I would like to get my hands on the Crunch algorithm used in ARC, and apply it to the file as it is up/downloaded. Since Crunch is a one-pass compression scheme, and it usually results in a better compression than even Squeeze (which is a two-pass algorithm), it would make a great default upload compression. As for the compression byte definition in AB, I would suggest: 0==uncompressed, 1==squeezed, 2==Crunched, & 3==packed for now. The receiving-file display should at least tell the user what packing method was used, even if it is not going to unpack it. For example: Receiving: Name: Size Compression ————- —- ———– File1 4096 (squeezed) dir1 (dir) File2 9873 Uncrunching… File3 8734 (Unknown 6) File4 58 The user is being told that File1 is squeezed, but we didn't unsqueeze it, we don't even know what File3 (compression # 6) is, but that File2 was crunched, but was uncrunched as it was downloaded. An option to save the previous receive-list to disk would give the user something to refer to when it comes time to manually decompress things. –Wayne * Reply: 10544