Compression packages (results and site)

[Rob Harper]

*************** Recent comparison of compression programmes *************
     Well, SEA was kind enough to send me a copy of their ARC+Plus
     programme to test against other compression programmes, and I felt
     that I should post the results.  As a preliminary statement, their
     manual and package is nice, but their programme just doesn't hold
     water -- in terms of speed at least.

     Also, now that PKZip 1.93a and ARJ 2.22 are supposedly out, could 
     someone direct me (via e-mail) to an ftp'able location?  Thanks!

           Packing Test for Pak/PKArc/PKZip/Zoo/LHArc/Hyper/ARJ/ARC
           --------------------------------------------------------

     The files used in the test are given below, and is the entire
distribution of the terminal emulation programme, QVT 3.74.  Here, A
denotes an ASCII file, B is a binary file.  The first two timing columns
given are for compression and decompression on a Zenith 151 running a V20
chip/8087 at 4.77 MHz on a 20Mb fully compressed harddisk, the third is the
compress time for a 12 MHz 80286 clone on a 40Mb fully compressed harddisk.
Your times may vary.

                       DEFAULT  VT      3159    A
                       QVT      HLP    17386    A
                       QVT_BBS  EXE   169929    B
                       QVT_KB   MAP     2219    A
                       READ     ME     12444    A
                       RELNOTES 374    20342    A
                                      ------
                                      225479

 Compression Tool    Extension       Time Taken     Final Size    % Compression
 ----------------    ---------    ----------------  ----------    -------------
  PKArc 3.61            ARC       0:43  0:36   7.6    146,507          35.0%
  Zoo 2.01              ZOO       1:41  1:05  18.1    147,819          34.4%
  Zoo 2.10              ZOO       4:03  1:26  37.5    148,250          34.3%
  tar/compress (16 bit) xxx       2:00  1:29          150,157          33.4%
  cpio/compress ( " )   xxx       2:26                149,927          33.5%
  SEA ARC 6.02          ARC       1:54  1:09  17.1    152,916          32.2%

  LArc 3.33             LZS       3:05                123,363          45.3%

  PKZip 1.10            ZIP       1:44  0:30  16.6    109,335          51.5%
  Pak 2.51          PAK/ARC/ZIP   2:35  0:55  26.3    109,019          51.7%
  Hyper 2.50            HYP       2:57  2:24  23.6    109,771          51.3%

  SEA ARC 7.12          ARC       4:29  2:19  37.7    108,550          51.9%

  LHArc 2.13            LZH       3:07  0:51  26.1    104,488          53.7%
  ARJ 1.10              ARJ       5:28                104,634          53.6%
  Zoo 2.10 (high comp)  ZOO       7:34  1:20  63.3    104,804          53.5%

  ARJ 2.10              ARJ       2:41  1:01  24.0    102,692          54.5%
  ARJ 2.20              ARJ       2:48  1:00  24.5    102,687          54.5%

     There are now essentially five groupings of archivers with the
fast release of ARJ 2.10.  Best compression/time combination yet.  Very
impressive, especially with a 50% improvement in compression speeds over
the previous (1.xx) release.  Now, we will have to see if LHArc or PKZip
can catch up on its next release -- rumour has a new ZIP 2.0 coming out
sometime.  Pak and Hyper are out of it, unless a dramatic speed improvement
can be realized.  I do not expect this.  SEA's ARC 6.02 is essentially
useless compared to the others -- the old ZOO has better compression/times!

     Courtesy of SEA, I have been able to test ARC 7.12 (also known as
ARC+Plus with the full-screen user interface).  I didn't try the full
screen interface -- I use these tools purely from the command line.  ARC
7.12 also has a very nice command line interface, with a graphical
representation of the work the compressor is doing.  However, as can be
seen from the timings above, it is a real *slug* compared to PKZip, LHArc,
and ARJ in terms of compress/uncompress speed.  There is a good improvement
on compression from the previous release, but I feel SEA should have spent
more time on speed optimization rather than pretty interfaces.  This
release is a year old -- perhaps things will change soon.

     Current recommendations are PKZip and LHArc, in terms of compression,
speed, and usage.  ARJ is better, but must become more popular in usage
before I can give it an enthusiastic recomendation.  Note that LHArc and
ARJ both are capable of compressing LZEXE files even further -- PKZip
currently is not.
--
Arnold Gill --- astrophysician trainee in exile             gill at physics.ubc.ca

        ********* Site for Unix compression programmes ********

zeus at zeus3.sozialwissenschaften.uni-mannheim.de (thomas neser) writes:

>i search lharc and zip sources for unix, which not only decompress.
>P.S. i use sunos 4.1, hpux 8.05 and munix.

lharc and zip, along with arc, jpeg, unzip, and zoo are all available
on grind.isca.uiowa.edu in the unix/arc-progs directory.
All but zip and unzip are full featured compress/uncompress/test/etc
programs.  For zip you need both zip and unzip to get everything.

					Firestar
-- 
*****************************************************************************
* Michael Pins (Firestar)     |   Internet: amigapd at isca.uiowa.edu          *
* ISCA's Amiga Librarian      |         #include <std.disclaimer>           *
*****************************************************************************

RGDS -=ROB=-



-- 
   Rob Harper                     /   E-mail:          harper at convex.csc.fi    
   Finnish State Computer Centre  /   Molbio/software: harper at nic.funet.fi
   P.O. Box 40, SF-02101 Espoo    /   Telephone:       +358 0 457 2076
   Finland                        /   Fax:             +358 0 457 2302