Joe Negron wrote in a message to Steffen Offermann:

 JN> ZIP and ARJ are, for almost all practical purposes,
 JN> identical in compression (as far as ratio goes).  

Not at all. I run a bbs, and whenever my time allows it,
I repack the files in my incoming directories with the
archiver that yields the best results. In most of all
cases ARJ compresses better than all the other archivers
except RAR: When an archive contains lots of small files,
RAR wins, otherwise ARJ does. There are certain situations
when ZIP or even LHArc compress better - namely on pure
text files.

 JN> Speedwise, ZIP is superior to ARJ (and LZH) in most 
 JN> cases, particularly for extraction.

I cannot confirm that either. My experience is, that ARJ
usually compresses faster, and I think it also is faster
in decompression. 

SO> Disk space is an important resource, and besides: Files
SO> sent over the modem cost less if they are smaller. So 
SO> from my point of view there really _is_ a need for ARJ/2.

 JN> The need for an ARJ/2 has little to do with disk space 
 JN> (when compared to other archivers which offer superior 
 JN> compression), but more to do with options and features.

Well, _I_ really do _not_ care about fancy features. What
I want is a good compressor, that's all. It may even be
a bit slower than the others - who cares? And I repeat
myself: From my experience ARJ often creates the smallest
archives after RAR, and sometimes it even beats RAR.

But lets end this thread here - it's up to Robert Jung
to port ARJ to OS/2 or leave it. I think he is not very
inclined to do so, anyway.

Tschuess,
  Steffen 
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