Joe Negron wrote in a message to Nicky Morrow:
NM> [...] What I pointed out was that outstanding native OS/2 versions
  > exist in other archivers now and that I was terminating support for
  > arj on my system least we get a native OS/2 version soon.  I haven't
  > seen one and have now terminated arj support. My system is the major
  > hub for this area and the result was predictable...arj support is
  > drying up in the whole area.
 JN> The same thing will happen, to an extent, in the NYC area should I
 JN> make the same decision (I'm leaning strongly to RAR/2 at this point
 JN> - I was almost ready to do it, but figured I'd wait for v2.00 to be
 JN> released - well, v2.00 is considerably slower than v1.55, so now
 JN> I'm not sure if I will switch).
As a OS/2 user, I'm sure you are aware OS/2 is a priority pre-emptive
multitasker.  The author of RAR/2 added several features that aid one
in configuring your system under OS/2...specifically, the ability to
set RAR/2's run time priority and the ability to give back extra sleep
request during execution.
From the RAR/2 docs:
-ri[:] set priority and sleep time (OS/2 version only)
       This option is used to regulate system load by RAR in a 
       multitasking environment. 
       The task priority  (possible values, 0 to 128) is the OS/2 
       task priority.  Values of  are grouped as follows: 
                  value      OS/2 :
                    0                OS/2 default (i.e. 2:0, or =33)
                   1-32              1:0-1:31
                  33-64              2:0-2:31
                  65-96              3:0-3:31
                  97-128             4:0-4:31
       When  is equal to 0, the default OS/2 task priority is used.
       The sleep time  is a value from 0 to 1000 (milliseconds). 
       This is the period of time that RAR will give back to OS/2 after 
       every read or write during the packing or unpacking operation.  
       The sleep time setting is useful when several tasks with the
       same priority are running in the system. 
The ability to set your priority is a wonderful thing on a heavy duty
system, however, a low priority setting can give the impression that
RAR/2 is slow.  Should you want increased speed, just crank the priority
setting up until you are happy.  I use a low priority setting and set
sleep time to 50.  My boot up shows 18 processes including 78 threads
and I want my archivers to not slow more important things down.  With
DOS, in years past, speed was very important cause it usually meant
your BBS was offline while the processing was taking place, however,
with a great multitasker like OS/2, the mailer/bbs never need come
offline.  All processing can be done in the background.  RAR/2 is a
very nice compressor that gives me great configurability and a OS/2
version of arj that gives the same capability would be most welcome.
 JN> My BBS is one of the few in this area which uses ARJ as the 
 JN> primary archive format.
 JN> I think it's worth noting that, on my BBS, the ARJ distribution
 JN> archives have been downloaded many times:
 JN> The main reason most of the callers downloaded these files
 JN> (particularly the non-beta versions) is because they downloaded one
 JN> or more .ARJ files from the BBS and needed to be able to extract
 JN> them!  I'm sure that the vast majority of these downloads would not
 JN> have occurred had ARJ not been the standard archive format on my
 JN> BBS.
Ditto.
Cheers,
           Nicky 
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