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1999-01-09
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ARJ for OS/2 version 2.62 Release Notes January, 9, 1999
This product is an OS/2-hosted add-on for ARJ 2.6x for DOS. It may be
used separately from the DOS package but it doesn't contain the
documentation and utility files found in DOS release.
***********************************************************************
*** ***
*** THIS PRODUCT IS DEVELOPED SEPARATELY FROM THE MAINSTREAM ARJ ***
*** PACKAGE AND THEREFORE IS NOT UPDATED SYNCHRONOUSLY WITH ARJ ***
*** FOR DOS. SHAREWARE REGISTRATION FOR ARJ/2 IS NOT PROVIDED BY ***
*** ARJ SOFTWARE, INC. ***
*** ***
***********************************************************************
LEGAL NOTICE
Since this is a beta version, no warranties of any kind are made.
In no event should ARJ Software Russia be liable for any damage
resulting from use or misuse of this product.
You have a royalty-free right to distribute ARJ/2 package in any
form. Commercial use of this product must be approved by ARJ
Software, Inc.
The information in this document is a subject to change without
notice.
INTRODUCTION
As the OS/2 lacks a multifunctional compression utility, a version
of ARJ for OS/2 has been developed by ARJ Software Russia. The
aim of the porting was to retain the functionality and
compatibility with ARJ for DOS but several exceptions occur. They
are covered later in this document.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
* OS/2 version 1.2 or higher, or Windows NT v 3.10 or higher.
For OS/2 systems:
* A 80286 or higher CPU.
* 512K of memory is needed for operation.
For WinNT systems:
* 1024K of memory is needed for operation.
DIFFERENCES WITH THE DOS VERSION
("-" indicates a missing feature, "*" - a different operation and
"+" stands for a feature unique to ARJ/2)
- The "-$" option (volume label handling) is disabled. You still
can process any archives which contain volume labels but you
can't set or query a volume label for a drive.
- The "+<var>" option has no effect under OS/2. To conserve
memory, we pass only the COMPSEC and ARJ_SW environment
variables to ARJ functions.
- We've been experiencing problems with porting ARJSFXV 2.62. In
this package, version 2.61.6 of ARJSFXV/2 is included (this
means you'll not be able to retrieve files with retaining
DTA/DTC properties by running ARJSFXV executables although you
still can use ARJ to extract them retaining the properties).
- The GOST 28147-89 encryption procedure, provided with
ARJCRYPT.COM utility, is not available in OS/2 version. You
can use "-hg!" option under OS/2, however.
- Spaces in long filename specifications on the command line are
not permitted.
* ANSI pictures in comments are shown 80 columns wide. This is
mainly for compatibility reasons, as many of OS/2 users prefer
video modes other than 80x25, while DOS usually stays in 80
columns.
* ARJ/2 sets the "Host OS" to "OS/2" (or "WinNT") on its
archives. When extracting any such archive with ARJ for DOS,
some unusual behavior may occur. Versions of ARJ prior to 2.50
convert high-ASCII characters in filenames to 7-bit characters
by ignoring the high bit. So, the filename "▒TEST▒" will be
converted to "1TEST1" on extraction. ARJ/DOS also strips high
bit from archive comments, but only if the archive was created
by ARJ/2. Archives created with ARJ/DOS and then processed
under OS/2 are not affected.
* ARJ/2 uses the default OS/2 error handler that will normally
display pop-up menus prompting for action. The -& option is
not effective in ARJ/2. Moreover, the ampersand character is
used in OS/2 to start two processes consequently, so this
switch will actually split the command line.
* ARJSFX and ARJSFXJR archives will display ANSI sequences if
the ANSI support is enabled in the current OS/2 session (it's
enabled by default in OS/2).
* There's a bug in ARJ/DOS v 2.61/2.62: if an "ARJ M" command is
entered, and no files are added, a temporary file remains. It
seems to have been fixed in ARJ/2 v 2.61.12 and ARJ/2 v 2.62.
+ The new "-h2d" option will force the stamping of "MS-DOS" as
host operating system for the archives created by ARJ/2. It
may be used for compatibility, to avoid "binary file from
another OS" warnings.
+ "-h2p<n>" can be used to set the priority of ARJ/2. The
knowledge of OS/2 scheduling system is required to use this
option. It can dramatically increase performance but slow down
other processes. The <n> can be equal to 1, 2, 3 or 4:
1 = idle-time priority
2 = regular priority
3 = time-critical priority
4 = fixed-high priority
Priority delta values are not supported. We don't see a
strong requirement for them.
+ The "-h2a" option is implemented in ARJ/2 due to a popular
demand from FidoNet system operators. Basically it acts like
"-jo", with the exception that file names, and not the
extensions, are "serialized". Consider having a file called
"FILE995N.TXT" and an archive that contains the same file. If
extracted with the "-h2a" option, the file will be written to
to "FILE9950.TXT", if you extract it again, it'll be called
"FILE9951.TXT", and so on up to "FILE9959.TXT", then
"FILE9960.TXT". And after "FILE9999.TXT" ARJ/2 will start with
"FIL00000.TXT". This option allows you to extract one file to
100000000 unique names. It's essential to system operators
since multiple mail packets with the same name may come from
different systems.
NOTES:
1. It'll be wise to include this option in the script that
unpacks the ARCmail packets and NOT in ARJ_SW environment
variable. This option is a security measure for systems
running in unattended mode, and will only confuse you if
enabled by default.
2. There's a security hole: a file called "9999.XXX" or so,
will not be overwritten. However, all subsequent writes
will be redirected into file "0000.XXX". So, files with
9s in the beginning have less chances of being preserved.
Hopefully such situation is unlikely for FidoNet systems.
3. ARJ/2 v 2.62 has a similar option, "-jo1", to serialize
filenames, however its operation is different. The volume
must support long filenames in order to use this option,
moreover, it's not suitable for dealing with FidoNet
ARCmail.
+ ARJ/2 has no shareware volume size limitation for ARJSFXV
archives, because the self-extractor itself consumes a lot of
disk space.
+ ARJSFXJR does not support long filenames under Win95 DOS.
ARJSFXJR in ARJ/2 supports OS/2 long filenames.
KNOWN PROBLEMS
* ARJ 2.62 archives have a malformed header. This is the problem
of ARJ/DOS v 2.62 and ARJ32 v 3.00 alpha, since both of them
introduce new header format (revision 9) and, unfortunately,
they incorrectly create the headers. The archives are safe to
process with ARJ but you may lose the header comments. Many
utilities that process ARJ archives will incorrectly handle
ARJ/2 v 2.62 archives because of the new header format and the
bugs (FileCommander/2 v 2.10a is known to behave incorrectly).
Use the "-j$" option to disable handling of DTA/DTC properties
(we recommend ARJ/2 2.61 for those who don't need DTA/DTC
handling).
* ARJ/2 refuses to process archives accessed via NFS.
* The high bit is stripped from the comments of archives created
under Windows NT. A simple workaround is to use the "-h2d"
option.
* Microsoft OS/2 v 1.21 may be errorneously identified as WinNT
under certain circumstances. It affects the stamping of the
"Host OS" descriptor and results in the problem described
above.
* ANSI comments may be incorrectly displayed in ARJ/2 v 2.62.
* On FAT volumes under Windows NT, both long filenames and short
filenames may be used. If you refer to a long filename with a
short filename (for example, type "ARJ a lntest LONGFI~1.TXT),
the short filename will be stored as entered from console. So,
no LFN equivalent is placed into the archive, and if a file
with a similar long filename exists in the archive, it will
not be replaced.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Q: Does ARJ/2 support EAs?
A: No. You'll need to split EAs from the source files with the
EAUTIL program and then rejoin them.
Q: Why ARJ/2 is a 16-bit executable?
A: There are several reasons for it. First, the Huffman encoding
is written in pure 8086 assembler. That's why ARJ 2.x is many
times faster than ARJ 1.x, and ARJ32 is quite slow compared to
ARJ/2. Second, OS/2 16-bit binaries do NOT run in VDMs and are
actually as fast and reliable as 32-bit ones. So-called 16->32
thunks are called when OS/2 API is accessed but it's misery -
ARJ/2 does Huffman encoding most of the time, not involving
any kind of external API.
Q: Will you release a 32-bit version of ARJ/2 some day?
A: When ARJ32 will replace ARJ/DOS as a mainstream product, we'll
port it to OS/2 to give the same functionality.
However, 16-bit versions will be favored until that moment.
Q: What is ARJLX?
A: It's the same program as ARJ/2, compressed with LXLITE
utility. It requires OS/2 v 3.0 or higher to run. You may
encounter some compatibility problems with it (it's unable to
register ARJLX with REGISTER.EXE, and so on...)
Q: How can I create an installer for my OS/2 product with ARJ?
A: ARJSFX/2 is able to run OS/2 commands after unpacking archive.
Try this: create a script you want to to be invoked after the
installation completes.
e.g., INSTALL2.CMD:
=======
/* REXX */
if RxFuncQuery('SysLoadFuncs') then do
call RxFuncAdd 'SysLoadFuncs', 'RexxUtil', 'SysLoadFuncs'
call SysLoadFuncs
end
say "Installation has completed, creating desktop object..."
call SysCreateObject ....
========
and so on...
Now create an archive comment with the first line as follows:
)) \InstallDir\ -b -x -y -!INSTALL2.CMD
Call it, for example, CMT.ANS. Now create an ARJSFX archive:
ARJ a PACKAGE.EXE -je -r -a -jm -zCMT.ANS -xCMT.ANS -j$
The -j$ switch is essential because the header comments are
mishandled otherwise.
You'll get a self-extracting archive with an automatically
invoked installation program.
Note that 5-second delay that occurs when the self-extractor
starts is specific to shareware version of ARJ. You may not
commercially distribute these packages.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
ARJ/2 has been developed by ARJ Software Russia with the most of
original ARJ code left intact. It has been briefly tested on OS/2
v 2.0, 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0, and Microsoft Windows NT Workstation
v 3.51.
The ARJ/2 development team:
Programmed by Andrew Belov
Testing lead by Viatcheslav Odintsov
Source code is not available for public use.
REVISION HISTORY
(only general availability versions are listed)
2.61.10 21/11/1998 Initial release.
2.61.11 26/11/1998 ARJ/2 2.61.10 would cause exception 0Dh if
ARJ$DISP is killed from the task list. The
"clear screen" ANSI sequence now works.
2.61.13 13/12/1998 "ARJ M" fixup, decreased the size of EXEs,
ARJ/2 now also works under Windows NT.
2.61.14 31/12/1998 Minor fixes. It is the last build of ARJ/2
v 2.61.
2.62.02 09/01/1999 G.A. version. Minor fixes in the message
section. ARJSFX now properly supports the
"-!" option.
End of document