[tex-live] Re: [tug-board] Any news of DVDs ?

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Fri Jan 27 00:17:46 CET 2006


>>>>> "Karl" == Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> writes:

  >     comprehensibility of ZIP compression is a strong argument for
  > its adoption in preference to BZ2.

  > You are the first person I can recall who complained about being
  > unable to use the .bz2 files.  No doubt there are others who
  > simply didn't report their problems, but, overall, I don't think
  > it's our job to explain every piece of software involved.  We want
  > to encourage people to join user groups, after all.

I absolutely agree with Karl.

And I absolutely agree with the phrase "I don't think it's our
job...".  

I think that even Windows users are smart enough to pass an error
message to google when they don´t know how to proceed.  And it should
not be too difficult to install software which can extract tar.bz2
files even under Windows.

The compression algorithm ZIP uses is amazingly inefficient if a lot
of small files are involved (for instace the tex4ht font files).  In
certain cases zip files are ten times larger than tar.bz2 files.

Sticking with ZIP is as annoying as sticking with 8.3 filenames.
Sorry, but in which world do we live today?

Efficiency of compression algorithms does not matter very much if you
have DSL (and maybe even a flatrate).  But many people have to live
with their slow and expensive internet connection.

You certainly will not understand what I mean unless you had been in
Vietnam (12 PCs connected to a single voice modem in an internet cafe
in Sa Pa).

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
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