Hello, Shawn.

Monday September 14 2009 at 11:40, you wrote to me:

 SH>   I would rather you used some insane none supported archiver then a
 SH>   SFX.   You know I just give you a ahrd time about RAR, but to be
 SH>   honest it doesn't bother me, I have Winrar registered and use it as
 SH>   my main archiver anyway.

I was seriously considering creating a SFX inside a ZIP archive.  That way
it'd pass through systems with little or no problems yet still retain the
authenticity envelope I want.  I've WinRAR registered too and I think its
interface is better than the rest.  Plus the tech/customer support is quick
and gets things done.

 SH>   Granted when I compress something I have winrar create a zip, but
 SH>   that's a personal preference.  I just feel ZIP is more stable even
 SH>   though I know that's not the case.  Kind of a mental block I think.

Here's the real skinny on why I've used RAR all of these years:

- RAR is much cheaper to register, $29, than ZIP/DOS, $49.  (Remember
folks, ZIP/Windows uses a slightly different algorithm than ZIP/DOS and for
older BBS/TIC software, the newer software can confuse the hell out of the
old stuff.)

- RAR is continually being improved, not so for ZIP as much if at all.

- RAR has an OS/2 native version: it's the DOS version I use as that is
written using a bound executable (I think). The program itself uses EMX so
the EXE might be of a magical type I'm not familiar with  so it's
either a 32-bit DOS or a 32-bit OS/2 executable depending on where you run
it...let's see ZIP do that. :)  I do have a seperate key for RAR 2.02,
which leads me to my next point...

- I use RAR 2.02 because a lot of BBS software can't handle the newer
versions very well if at all.  RAR's core algorithm was changed some time
ago, but I continue to use 2.02 because hey, it works.

- If you hit the USENET binary groups or use torrents enough, you'll see
that about 90% of what is passed through those viaducts is all of the RAR
format. RAR can do multi-volume spanning much better than ZIP plus RAR can
do tighter compression on nearly anything you can throw at it than ZIP.

- Finally, why use RAR at all?  It offers authentication verification. 
When I first started writing doors, it really pissed me off to see people
sticking ads inside of my archives.  Petty, yes, but I still didn't like
it-still don't.

So there you have it.  I finally gave up on the Micronet nodelist using RAR
because people were throwing fits (although after I switched back to ZIP, I
figured out what I was doing wrong, heh), but good God, why people bitch
about something that's free is beyond me.  I dunno.  (mumbles something
about seeing past the end of one's nose)

I wish people would generate this kind of traffic about my doors instead of
what archiver I use.  Sheesh.

Later,
Sean

//sean{at}nsbbs.info | http://nsbbs.info | ICQ: 19965647

... Necessity never made a good bargain.
--- GoldED/2 3.0.1