XPK Compression Tools on Non-Amiga Platforms

[nyteschayde]

I was looking for alternatives to zip, rar and ace for the PC platform and I was noticing that there wasn't much out there. Does anybody want to go in together to port the XPK interface and libraries to the PC and or the Mac. I think it would be well worth while.

What do you think?

[nyteschayde]

It appears that there was some effort made to port the libraries to UNIX but nothing seems to have come from it.

It might be a decent place to start but I believe it was based on old build of XPK for the Amiga. In addition it doesn't even compile under mingw.

[trgse]

there is already similar products for windows and mac but more appropriate for the windows/mac systems.

ask the PowerPacker author why he did not make a windows version of PowerPacker.

and why? Windows would for instance croak when it encounters a BZIP'ed file without a correct extension, for instance RAKE a MS-Exe file and put it on a windows machine and watch how windows behave.

[JoannaK]

I think FilZip can read/extract quite many older formats (including lha,arc, zoo) but apparently it's coder has no need to add packers to those into program. It's free software so donations with suggestions might work quite well  :-P

[Elwood]

Additionnally you can compress directories with Win2000 or XP (I don't if it's a good compression though).

[trgse]

there is also UltimateZIP which I think is very good (can handle just about any format) but unfortunately it's a (what I call) 'sponsored freeware'.

and then you have WinRAR which is a lot better than WinZIP (in the supported archives department)

but WinZip isn't bad in itself but you need extra decompresors to handle LHA etc.

[xeron]

Elwood wrote:
Additionnally you can compress directories with Win2000 or XP (I don't if it's a good compression though).

It would most likely be something based on the LZX technology, seeing as they bought that and use it with the "CAB" files on most of their install CDs.

[KennyR]

I think the xpk libraries are a nice Amiga native packing system and wouldn't port very well to other, inferior platforms (:-D) - especially since most of the sublibs are written in pure 68k assembler...

[nyteschayde]

Using WinZIP I compressed a CD image file (740MB) to only 720MB. Using WinUAE I compressed the same image using XPKNUKE and it was compressed to 670MB. You tell me what is better.  Looking at the sources there is some ASM but I think someone who knows assembler for both machines should be able to port the code.

I don't expect to have applications temporarily uncompress like powerpacker but it would be nice to create self-extracting archives that are obviously much smaller than what is capable with WinZip, WinACE and WinRAR.

[nyteschayde]

I recently compiled the partial UNIX port of XPK under windows using CygWin. I tried mSys before and it didn't have enough to  do it right.

4 libraries where ported in the UNIX port. NONE,SQSH,GZIP and RLEN. Although everything compiled correctly I still can't seem to get it to locate the compressor libraries correctly so I'll have to look into it a bit more.

There aren't that many different source files so perhaps I'll attempt a JAVA version of XPK. It would be a rewrite and based on this code and the latest code for the Amiga and it would be Object Oriented. Possibly using .jar files as the compressor libs. What does anybody think?