21 June 2018, 14:34 | #1 |
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The origins of LHA
I thought this was interesting, the origins and history of how LHA came to be, by Haruhiko Okumura:
http://oku.edu.mie-u.ac.jp/~okumura/...n/history.html |
21 June 2018, 15:24 | #2 |
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utterly interesting, thanks! So it all began in Japan...
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21 June 2018, 18:33 | #3 |
move.l #$c0ff33,throat
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Very interesting indeed, thanks for sharing.
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22 June 2018, 10:10 | #4 |
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Insightful read. Didn't realize PKZIP was similar.
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22 June 2018, 21:41 | #5 |
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I recently rebuilt it froml the source on windows, works but creates files with userid 0, so not readable on Linux without being root... bummer. I'd really like a working windows version.
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25 June 2018, 16:54 | #6 | |
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Cool info. Thanx. |
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26 June 2018, 03:01 | #7 |
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But how did lha become de-facto standard for Amiga?
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26 June 2018, 03:35 | #8 |
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26 June 2018, 05:20 | #9 |
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Zoo was quite popular in the early days. I think there was something in between like lharc(?), but then lha came around and it made smaller archives than anything else. I think it was also faster.
I think the reason it became the de-facto standard was that it was better than the alternatives and everyone just switched. This is as far as I remember it some 25 years later. Whenever something new came around, we Amiga people were not afraid to try it. There was no "we have done it like that for 100 years" thinking in that community. |
26 June 2018, 08:50 | #10 | ||
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Quote:
Would be interesting to hear Stefan Boberg comment on that. Quote:
There's something friendly and familiar in the LHA name I guess. |
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26 June 2018, 12:26 | #11 | |
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So what made it standard? It is older than LZX. And LZX was not free for a long time, which limited its distribution. Also LHA was used on Fish disks and on Aminet. Today I would still prefer to release software in LHA archives. |
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26 June 2018, 14:23 | #12 |
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The main reason for LHA is IMO that it is used for Aminet archives. I think LHA is still fine today, although it is not the best archiver. Small packed size isn't that important like 25 years ago. Nowadays, in my opinion fast decompress time is the main argument against LHA.
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26 June 2018, 16:34 | #13 | |
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LZX: 45 seconds to compress to 370 KB, 10 seconds to decompress LHA: 80 seconds to compress to 435 KB, 16 seconds to decompress |
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26 June 2018, 18:17 | #14 |
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I want to add that back in the days, I think there were some patent or IP restriction that also caused issues using one or more of the alternatives.
Lha was free, did a better job than the other free alternatives and people switched to it and I suppose it just reached critical mass. |
26 June 2018, 21:24 | #15 |
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Leffman the Amiga version creates correct archives. I had fully automated whdload slave distribution from building to lha packing & sending mail to release, but it used the windows lha and Bert had to "sudo" to be able to extract them (and repack them...)
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26 June 2018, 21:31 | #16 | |
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Everything in and from/to RAM: on A1200 040/40 32MB: LZX: 8.26 seconds to compress to 370 KB, 5.6 seconds to decompress LHA: 11.32 seconds to compress to 435 KB, 5.8 seconds to decompress Command lines for compressing: lzx -bo1024 -Qf -r -R -q -2 af <target> <source> lha -q -r -Z -Qq a <target> <source> |
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27 June 2018, 09:00 | #17 |
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I think another reason why LZX wasn't more popular is that the authors only made the compressor on the Amiga side and the DOS version never arrived.
It's interesting to read that MS cabinet files uses LZX algorithm. |
27 June 2018, 21:08 | #18 |
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The author of LZX got hired by Microsoft at some point.
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27 June 2018, 22:58 | #19 |
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29 July 2018, 18:29 | #20 |
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The one thing I always wondered was why the archives were called .lzh on PC and .lha on Amiga.
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