Remember Phil Katz, author of PKZip?

A fascinating tale of a tortured genius.

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/research/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/pkzip.htm

Very Sad.

I remember my days using PKzip, before windows 3.1. This is too bad.

one drink is too many, and a thousand is not enough,....... there but for the grace of God, go I.

Sad story for sure. But I was the guy who invented the multiple-compression scheme algorithm. In particular, I was the guy who discovered that "incompressible" LZW files (such as GIFs) could be compressed using Huffman coding, back in 1987. And it was my code, integrated with SEA ARC, that was the first program to do this, anywhere on this planet.

I made exactly $0.00 from this discovery.

So it goes...

Now that Zip's been wired into Windows XP, no one else will see a nickel either.

Very Sad. I've been a big fan and user of his software.

I think his was the ultimate DOS program. Fast, flexible, and gave one the feeling of control and power. Only Turbo Pascal, Visicalc (Apple II) and Netscape 0.9 have given me such a rush.

>>it was my code, integrated with SEA ARC

Showing my age, here, but I remember unarc'ing files long, long ago! I tip my hat to you!

[ QUOTE ]
highlandsun said:
Sad story for sure. But I was the guy who invented the multiple-compression scheme algorithm. In particular, I was the guy who discovered that "incompressible" LZW files (such as GIFs) could be compressed using Huffman coding, back in 1987. And it was my code, integrated with SEA ARC, that was the first program to do this, anywhere on this planet.

I made exactly $0.00 from this discovery.

So it goes...


[/ QUOTE ]

Wow! So were you privie to the "inside story" between Vernon Buerg (ARC) and Phil Katz?

I remember using ARC long before using PKZIP! (AND, I STILL USE THE DOS LIST PROGRAM!)

I remember all the BBS's changing all their files over from ARC to ZIP.

The SCARY thing for me, is that I LOVE RUMPLE MINTZ too! I cannot tell you the last time I drank it, however, because the stuff is too strong, and you can easily go from completly sober to "what happened from 8pm until 2:00 am!

LIST is great for looking at weird files in odd formats or for looking for strings of hex characters. I used LHarc for a while too, since it was totally free, no strings attached - slow though. PKZip is/was fast! I use QEdit all the time for preparing text documents - love the WordStar text input option.

The thing in the article that blew me away was that he was consuming 3 liters of booze a day! That's almost 3/4 of a gallon....

Vernon Buerg did individual compression tools, Thom Henderson wrote ARC. I licensed the source code from Thom and ported it to Unix, then rewrote a bunch of the innards to speed it up. I also wrote the tests that tried multiple algorithms on one file to see what would compress best. This optimized code is what Phil Katz started with in PKARC, except he reimplemented my C source in hand-written assembler, which made it even faster.

My port of ARC is still bundled with a lot of Linux distributions, as well as a few commercial Unix distributions. Which amazes me to no end, since pretty much the whole world shifted to ZIP at least 10 years ago.

I use QEdit all the time too, (I mean, like I used it like 20 times today!) I use 2.1. I know I can re-code the keys, I just never have, and hate it when I hit the numeric minus sign . . .

I should see if there is a later version, I mean, 2.1 is a Feb 1990 release . . .!!!

I use the old Norton Utilities DOS FF command to do search and replace in dos files.

COMMAND LINE - The WAY GOD INTENDED US TO USE COMPUTERS!