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- Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
- Path: sparky!uunet!news.univie.ac.at!news.tu-graz.ac.at!fm11ap01.tu-graz.ac.at!schuetz
- From: schuetz@fm11ap01.tu-graz.ac.at (Alexander Schuetz)
- Subject: Re: Announcing CHARITYWARE: The best cruncher on C64 ever!
- Message-ID: <1993Jan5.223041.4197@news.tu-graz.ac.at>
- Sender: news@news.tu-graz.ac.at (USENET News System)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: fm11ap01.tu-graz.ac.at
- Organization: none
- References: <1993Jan5.033737.10774@news.tu-graz.ac.at> <1ibropINNo9r@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 22:30:41 GMT
- Lines: 60
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- >>Well, the title says it and I promise it. But first, the story so far. Do
- >>some guys remember the (quite wellknown) DARKSQUEEZER? Yes? Good. And if
- >>you know other Lempel-Ziv style crunchers on the C64, you should know that
- >>they are very slow.
-
- >Never heard of it before, and I am our user groups founder. Must have
- >been before my time.
-
- Okay, but then you must have been off the scene or off anyone for a bloody
- long time. *EVERYBODY* knows Darksqueezer, it was released in 1988 and
- people still use it heavily for crunching their demos, programs, whatsoever.
- I am, however, on the C64 since 1982. Ask anyone who is seriously
- programming demos or games: "How it comes your game is so short?" - "Well
- I used (Darksqueezer, Timecruncher, 1001 Cruncher etc.etc.etc.". Have
- you never been programming anything serious?
-
- >By requiring an REU, you have limited the audience for 'your' product.
- >What I didn't see was how the compaction compares against .ARC or .LZH
- >on the Commodore, AND how compatible it is.
- >Do you have to uncrunch the file to run it, or is it runnable in
- >crunched form?
-
- I have not limited the audience. The computer memory is limiting ME! A
- data structure, as a large 16-bit array of lists, *NEEDS* 512K ram and there
- is little I can do, except to use two disk drives. I will do that as soon
- as I have seen *just at least a few (!)* donations.
-
- My cruncher is *BY NO MEANS* an arcer. He is intended to crunch executable
- files, preferably machine code ones, thats why my cruncher asks for a
- start address. If, on the other hand, you have a program and you want to
- load data files during the execution of you program (e.g. a shoot em up
- with several level that have to be loaded) thats why there is a level
- version of Darksqueezer better known as "Levelsqueezer". In this case,
- the file is decrunched while loading; on the normal Darksqueezer, the
- file is decrunched in memory. Darksqueezer crunches files with a start
- address of $0801 and a max end address of about $f780. Levelsqueezer
- crunches files with any startadress and a max length of about 240 blocks.
- However, larger files can be splitted up and linked together later (also
- referred to as "IFFL", must I tell you everything?)
-
- For the arcer guys, well, use LYNX (or any program that makes selfextracting
- stuff), then use Darksqueezer.
-
- If you are talking about ARCERS on the PC, well I compared it with the
- best one (ARJ) and my result was 250 bytes shorter. LZH and ARC *can only
- be* worse. Satisfied?
-
- However, in general, DARKSQUEEZER is rather aimed towards experienced
- machine language programmers (demo and game programmers) who want to be
- sure that their files are as short as possible. It is also highly re-
- commended to use an equal-char-cruncher before darksqueezing a program in
- order to eliminate big areas filled with the same byte-values from your
- program.
-
-
- Email welcome.
-