At 11:55 AM 6/8/93 -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
In the case of this
code, the user has to extract, compile, and install it, not to mention
getting it to work with the particular perversion of X windows that his
vendor supplies. The overhead of decompressing it is marginal by comparsion.
But this argument cuts both ways; the overhead of using a compression
program external to the mailer is also marginal by comparison.
In fact, this is probably data I don't WANT my mailer to decompress,
because it's just as easy to say:
zcat keiths_wonder_widget.tar.Z | tar xvf -
as
tar xvf - keiths_wonder_widget.tar
and the former saves me some disk space.
So I would count this as another case of a specialized data type that
(practically speaking) has its own compression.
But I don't want allow my zeal for debate make me overstate my position. I
don't absolutely loathe the idea of a standard for compression; I just
don't see it as much of a benefit, taking all things into consideration.
I don't expect MIME compression
to be used for normal text/plain email messages.
I fervently hope you are right.
--
Steve Dorner, Qualcomm Inc.
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel IngSoc.