Matthew Palcic
1030 Dayton-Yellow Springs Rd.
Xenia, Oh  45385-9508


                        "Why Live In The Past?"
                         ---------------------

In his article "Why Change What Works?" (PC World, Sep 89), Hal DuPrie
shows a very biased comparison of ARC and PKZIP.  SEA did sue Phil Katz,
which DuPrie fails to mention was a major blow to the shareware world.
Regardless of the fact that many people stopped using ARC because of
that suit, ZIP was an instant success in the bulletin board world.

Comparing ZIP to ARC, DuPrie states that ZIP has only slightly better
(by 5 to 10 percent) compression.  I have found that the Beta version of
PKZIP v1.0 usually beats ARC by at least 15 percent.  It's inefficient
to maintain files on a bulletin board in multiple formats.  So why not
convert all the files to ZIP files (as many bulletin boards are doing).
The question of keeping track of multiple file formats is easily solved
by a number of shell programs that detect which compression format was
used and what program will uncompress the file; no problem for novices.

I called PKWare and was informed that both an Amiga and VAX VMS version
are under development and should be released by the end of the year.
However, ZIP lacks the machine support that ARC has.  I would score ARC
a point over ZIP in that respect. ZIP 0, ARC 1.

The source code for ARC was released only YEARS after the program had
been on the market, and the ARC format still belongs to SEA.  However,
Phil Katz has released the algorithms for ZIP compression and generously
released the ZIP format into the public domain.  Several programmers
have released source code in both Pascal and C for creating/extracting
ZIP files.  That code can be ported to other machine formats as easily
as the source to ARC. Shareware and public domain authors need not worry
about infringement on any utilities they write for ZIP.  The ZIP
format's public domain status scores ZIP 1, ARC 1.

ZIP is reliable.  Phil Katz enjoyed a healthy success with PKARC, so his
reputation carries on in ZIP.  The code is no more bound to be
bug-ridden than ARC.  The ARC 6.02 manual (p.28) reads "Version 6.0...is
a substantial rewrite..."  Why would a 'substantial rewrite' of ARC be
any different than changing PKARC into PKZIP?  In fact, ARC 6.02 failed
to handle shared files at all (program aborted) where PKZIP and PKARC
both correctly handled the situation.  ARC 6.02 also does a poor job of
housecleaning if the program aborts.  A very large temporary file and a
zero byte file remained in the directory after using Ctrl-Break.  I
won't count the rewrite against the new version of ARC.  But it should
be of concern to heavy users of ARC.  However, the incorrect handling of
shared files is of concern to network users. ZIP 2, ARC 1.

The remark about keeping both ARC and ZIP on a system for compatibility
is rather meaningless.  The savings ZIP offers definitely earn its keep.
Whether having both programs on a system would "...probably take up more
space than the savings..." is beside the point and is relative only to
the price of eggs. In fact, for those users that do not require
compatibility (for instance users that do not log onto bulletin boards)
ZIP is the clear winner because of its better compression. ZIP 3, ARC 1.

ARC is no more compatible with ZIP than ZIP is compatible with ARC.  ARC
is not compatible with anything but ARC.  If it had not been for SEA
suing PKWare, a newer PKARC would probably still be compatible with
PKARC.  However, that is a moot issue that arose entirely because of the
law suit.  Somehow ARC is now compatible with the so called 'Deviant'
Squashing method used by PKARC.  Is it coincidental that this happened
after SEA gained the rights to the source code for PKARC?  For that I
score against SEA, and software consumers should be aware that SEA still
has the option to sue any of their other competitors. ZIP 4, ARC 1.

Moreover, I find ARC no easier to use than ZIP.  A command line
interface can hardly be considered 'comfortable.'  Any of the popular
shells in the BBS community can make either utility equally friendly.
That's honest.  Neither program scores a point for their 'interface'.

Finally, I see Phil Katz as the Steve Jobs of compression programs.  He
came up with some innovative ideas for PKARC and came through again with
PKZIP.  And he even sells ZIP for less than what SEA sells ARC.  The
expandability of the ZIP format shows it will be around without change
longer than ARC was without change.  ARC now offers better flexibility
and marginally better compression than previous versions, at the expense
of compatibility. Darn the luck.  ZIP will become the de facto standard
and replace ARC, as major bulletin boards (such as Exec-PC) and on-line
services (such as CompuServe) support ZIP.  ARC will continue to follow
in the footsteps of ZIP.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Compression results:

  5,518,337 bytes, consisting of over 2 megs of Pascal source code and
  over 2 megs of binary .EXE files resulted in the following:

        Program     Compressed  Ratio
        ----------  ----------  -----
        ARC 6.02     3,215,042  41.7%
        PKARC 3.61   3,092,035  43.9%
        PKZIP 1.0á   2,419,261  56.1%

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Matthew Palcic is a Computer Engineering student in Dayton, OH and is
the author of several shareware programs including DynaBoot.

