The Atari Compendium/The Atari Compendium (Toad Computers) (1994).iso/files/compress/arj_992a.lzh/HISTORY.TXT

Text File | 1994-10-06 | 14KB | 249 lines

                    Speed and other important issues
                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, you can be happy, since this is definitely the FASTEST UNARJ.TTP-depacker
on the ST series. (Every depacker we could locate showed ratings which differed
by at least a factor 1.5 so it's advisable to kill those if you have this one.
We support all regular UNARJ.TTP-options (except Security Envelope, which isnot
supported by any other tool we know of. (Except the original ARJ.EXE))
If you have had the pleasure to meet our previous releases (UNARJ230, UNARJ241
and UNARJ990), you'll be very pleased to hear we are pushing those right off
the road:

Speed test with 2-volume ARJ test file:
(depacking speed is very dependent on harddisk and OS speed; for this test a
Siemens MEGAFILE 250 is used (seek time 22ms, data speed 470kB/s))

                         testing:            depacking:
UNARJ 2.30 (rev. IA1)  |  2:18.00       |       4:14.00
UNARJ 9.92 (rev. 2.023)|  0:38.22       |       2:18:00
speed factor:          |      3.6       |           1.8

In fact, this thing is a complete rewrite which shares no code with the
original UNARJ230 versions which came from Insh_Allah's hand. Mr Ni! from the
TOS crew has optimized the decompression routines severely; I believe we are
the fastest ARJ-decompressor around at the time of this writing...
Unfortunately the depacker has grown another 20K but I think that won't hurt
all you HD-users. In exchange for this extra 20K code you have the complete
manual inside the .TTP (Still there are a lot of cocksuckers that dare to copy
the executables without adding the proper documentation which was supplied with
the original: this way you can derive the documentation every time again and
again!) If you want a smaller executable (lunatic or disk-only user) we have a
Junior Version available in which we cut down on the options-palette for both
German & English lunatic/disk-only users. Please note that the German version
may contain even more typo's and other editorial-related bugs/errors/features
than the English version, since the German language isn't our native language.
(We only included it since Germans seem to suffer from a sufficient
understanding of English.) (For French people: recompile with -DLANGUAGE=FRENCH
;-))Additional note: manual-writers are herewith invited to redesign and
rewrite the complete documentation so it will become a decent manual/reference.

       Some crap about copyright, warez and all that sort of shit
       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This package (ARJ*.*) is mind-warez (You should at least feel guilty when you
don't send us a message or a postcard). Everything you do or don't is your own
problem: blowing fuzes and melting Atari computers are not included in the
insurance policy. Anything else is neither. (You may praise who/what-ever you
believe in when you get this to work ;-)))
However we feel 'backing up your system before installing UNARJ' would be a bit
overdone... Sources for this thing are available on request: we (both Mr Ni!
and myself) invested a lot of time in this product so we would appriciate any
donations (needn't be money, though! Extra processing power/devices are
welcomed too!) in exchange for the complete C/ASM-source release. (Just write
us a note when you're interested)

                        Future developments
                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At the moment our biggest problem is the design of the various ARJ compression
modes. We only have access to some C-source for the depacker as distributed by
Robert K Jung, however we have implemented mode 4 (FAST) compression anyway.
Huffman additions (Mode 1-3) will have to wait a little while for us to get the
inspiration to do it... At the moment we can't say anything more about expected
compression speed & ratio's so you'll have to wait for that release (which
would develop quite a bit faster if we could get our hands on some
C/ASM/Pascal(?! yuck!) source. (If you have a ARJ-archiver-source written in
APL or any other language we would be happy to learn the language anyway ;-)))
This is an Alpha-release since we haven't had the time to check all options
extensively. Besides, we like to keep this a non-final version until it can be
distributed with our ARJ10.00α. If you find anything which doesn't match our
documentation, please notify us through our contact addresses, email or support
BBS in The Netherlands (MBH BBS, for telephone number and e-mail adresses see
the end of the document); we will try to fix any problems a.s.a.p.
This distribution is dedicated to:
            ALL VIRGINAL HARDDISKS OUT THERE
            (unarj x -r~xd \*.ARJ    was made for you, my dear!)

                     Redirection issues
                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you peeked at the commandline options, you'd sure seen the 'redirection'
text there: many people start to tremble when they see this: Will my marv'
shell be put out of bizz?! No! If you run a shell or anything that takes over
redirection (by parsing our commandline first!) we won't see the redirection
commands given, thus allowing the system to have it it's own way. You should
however note the fact that we don't differentiate between STDOUT and STDERR in
that case! (Well.... hm.... we do write STDOUT to GEMDOS handle 1 (stdout)
while STDERR is sent to GEMDOS handle -1 (non-redirectable (they say ;-))
stdout) This is not so much a bug introduced by us as it is a system-wide
problem: TOS hasn't ever had a seperate stderr channel as has UNIX.
So the risk is high you will redirect both out STDOUT *and* STDERR messages
when redirecting using your fave commandline shell. Here are the 'undocumented
features (now documented ;-))' that touch the redirection issue:
* STDOUT and STDERR will most probably not be recognized as seperate output
  streams when redirecting.
* Keypress requests and all that sort of shit is NOT (repeat: NOT!) suppressed
  when the system takes over redirection: we don't have a  method included
  (yet) to recognize external redirection. Therefore you should use the
  appropriate command-options to disable every possible request done by
  UNARJ.TTP
* Redirection used with TOS-versions before 1.4 could very well fail. (As it
  would with other toolz)
If you use UNARJ's internal redirection routines however, there's a difference
between STDOUT and STDERR. Also we will message you about the fact that output
is redirected: most novice users get the shivers when they don't see
screen-output for more than five minutes... If redirection attempts fail, you
will be told about that fact too! 4DOS users will have noticed we use the 4DOS
way of redirecting STDERR ('>&') instead of the UNIX way ('2>'). If you don't
like it: don't use it.

                            Environment
                            ~~~~~~~~~~~

UNARJ.TTP will first look for an environment variable named ARJ_SW and use its
value as switch options for UNARJ.TTP. You can inhibit UNARJ.TTP from using
this environment variable by using the "-+" option. You can also set the name
of the environment variable with the "-+" option as in UNARJ.TTP x -+ARJCFG
archive.
Use some environment editing/setting tool to create an environment on your
Atari. (Most shells could use some script-file or seperate command to do it...)
SET ARJ_SW=<switches>
Example:  SET ARJ_SW=-~arj- -jy+ -~k -e -v+ -~acv
Do NOT add any blanks after the variable name ARJ_SW. As in LHARC, command line
switches can be selected to override ARJ_SW settings. UNARJ.TTP will allow you
to use a different switch character "-" or "/" in ARJ_SW and in the command
line.
If the ARJ_SW environment variable specifies a filename (text not beginning
with a switch character), UNARJ.TTP will open that filename and scan it looking
for a line of text that begins in column 1 with the same letter as the
UNARJ.TTP command being executed. The following text is processed as the ARJ_SW
switche