()  A.C.T. - MAR. 1995  ()  Author: JEFF GILCHRIST  ()  Part 6 of 7  ()

QUANTUM 0.96 - This release is slightly faster and uses a little less
               memory.  A bug with storing directories has been fixed.
               Undocumented level 6 & 7 compression has been added.

ARJ 2.42b BETA - Many bugs have been fixed and many small features
                 have been added.  ARJ can now support multi-volume
                 SFX.  A switch was added to allow up to 32,000 files
                 to be archived at one time.  A new feature to allow
                 graphical displays while using ARJ, DEARJ and ARJSFX
                 has also been added.  No performance changes.

SQWEZ 2.1 - A more advanced shell has been added to SQWEZ.  In version
            1 you could only create SFX files but this version adds
            the ability to make .SQZ files which decreases the final
            archive size.  Several other features have also been added.

DWC, SQWEZ, PAK, - Special thanks to Peter Hubinsky (hubak@elf.stuba.sk)
BSA and AR         for sending me these archivers to test.

UPCT 1.6 - Special thanks to Jonathan Burt (jonathan@jaburt.demon.co.uk)
           for sending me this great freeware timing utility.

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

         As you may or may not have noticed, I have been releasing these
test results about once a month.  I have decided to release the results
on the first day of each month and name these tests A.C.T.

* Please note that the best overall selection is based entirely on the
archiver's compression/speed ratio.  It is NOT based on the reliability,
price, technical support or the options available in the archiver.

        I have decided to add an Options List which shows what archivers
support certain major options.  If you think I should add another
category to the list or you see an error, please let me know.  If there
is an error, please tell me what switch will activate the command that
I missed.

---------------------------- OPTIONS LIST ------------------------------

             MULTI-
             DISK      AUTH.           'SOLID'         DATA     GUI/TEXT
ARCHIVER     SPANNING  VERI.  ENCRYPT  ARCHIVES  SFX  PROTECT.   SHELL
--------     --------  -----  -------  --------  ---  --------  --------
AIN 2.2          X             X-???
AMGC 2.2         X             X-???
AR 0.02
ARC 6.02                       X-???
ARI 1.12         X             X-???              X       X
ARJ 2.42b        X       X     X-XOR              X
ARX 1.00
CODEC 3.10                     X-???
CRUSH 1.3                                         X
DWC 5.01                       X-???              X
HA 0.999b
HAP 3.14e11                                               X
HPACK 0.79a0     X       X     X-PGP       X              X
HYPER 2.5
INFO-ZIP 2.0     *             X-???              X
JRCHIVE 1.02                                      X
LHA 2.55b                                         X
LIMIT 1.2
PAK 2.51                 X     X-???              X
PKZIP 2.04g      X       X     X-???              X
PUT 3.41                                                            X
QUANTUM 0.96     X
RAR 1.53         X       X     X-???       X      X                 X
SAR 1.0
SQWEZ 1.0                                         X
SQWEZ 2.1                                         X                 X
SQZ 1.08.3                                        X
UC2 2.0          *       X     #-DES       %     soon     X       soon
ZOO 2.10

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

AUTH. VERI.  =  Authentication Verification (Security Envelope)
DATA PROTECT.  =  Data Protection Encoding (Stores Error Recovery Info)
ENCRYPT  =  Ability to encrypt files in archive with password (Garble)
SFX  =  Ability to create Self-Extracting Archives (.EXE)
GUI/TEXT SHELL = Graphical or Text Shell to manage archiver functions
                 and select files for compression/decompression

* - UC2 comes with a utility (SAS.EXE) to SPLIT archives into chunks
    and then rebuild them after.  This is not nearly as nice as
    multi-disk spanning.
  - INFO-ZIP comes with a utility called ZIPSPLIT which does the same
    thing as UC2's SAS utility.

# - You need to use ULTRACRYPT to get Triple DES encryption with UC2.
    This is a seperate shareware utility that is not built into UC2.

% - " UC2 uses shared dictionaries between file collections to utilize
    similarities between files. The compression is comparable to solid
    archives (RAR compresses about as well as UC2) but updates are much
    faster. " - Nico de Vries [AIP-NL, UltraCompressor II development]


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