WHY_ARJ.DOC July 1995 This document describes the benefits of ARJ. ARJ is a trend setter in PC file archivers. You can find reviews of ARJ in the following magazine articles: Computer Personlich, June 12, 1991, Leader of the Pack, Bernd Wiebelt and Matthias Fichtner. In this German magazine, ARJ 2.0 was named Test Sieger (Test Winner) over six other archivers including PKZIP and LHA. Compression, speed, documentation, and features were compared. PC Sources, July 1991, Forum, Barry Brenesal, "A new challenger, ARJ 2.0, not only offers the speed of PKZIP, but also has the best compression rate of the bunch." Computer Shopper, September 1991, Shells, Bells, and Files: Compressors for All Cases, Craig Menefee. "ARJ ... is extremely fast and produces excellent compression; it ... has a rich set of options. ... This is a mature technology, and any of these programs will do a fine and reliable job." PC Magazine, October 15, 1991, Squeeze Play, Barry Simon. "Jung has combined that foundation with academic research to produce an impressive product. ... If your main criterion is compressed size, ARJ will be one of your two main contenders, along with LHA." SHAREWARE Magazine, Nov-Dec 1991, Fall Releases, Joseph Speaks. "Don't tell the creators of ARJ that PKZIP is the standard for data compression. They probably already know. But that hasn't stopped them from creating a data compression utility that makes everyone - even the folks at PKWare - sit up and take notice. ... but compression statistics don't tell the whole story. The case for using ARJ is strengthened by new features it debuts." BOARDWATCH Magazine, December 1991, ARCHIVE/COMPRESSION UTILITIES. "This year's analysis rendered a surprise winner. Robert K. Jung's ARJ Version 2.22 is a relatively new compression utility that offers surprising performance. The program emerged on the scene within the past year and the 2.22 version was released in October 1991. It rated number one on .EXE and database files and number two behind LHarc Version 2.13 in our directory of 221 short text files." INFO'PC, October 1992, Compression de donn‚es: 6 utilitaires du domaine public, Thierry Platon. In this article, the French magazine awarded ARJ 2.20, the Certificat de Qualification Labo-tests InfoPC. PC Magazine, March 16, 1993, PKZIP Now Faster, More Efficient, Barry Simon. "One of the more interesting features is the ability to have a .ZIP file span multiple floppy disks, but this feature is not nearly as well implemented as in ARJ." PC Magazine, October 12, 1993, ARJ: A Worthy Competitor to PKZIP, Barry Simon. "We tested ARJ 2.41a against PKZIP 2.04g ... Overall, PKZIP proved to be faster, but compression results with the two programs were about equal. Where ARJ comes out ahead is in its many options ... ARJ's ability to compress data onto multiple floppy disks is especially good." ARJ FEATURES: 1) Registered users receive technical support from a full-time software author with over SIXTEEN years of experience in technical support and software programming. And YES, ARJ is a full-time endeavor for our software company. ARJ and REARJ have proven to be two of the most reliable archiver products available. We test our BETA test releases with the help of thousands of users. ARJ has proven reliable and stable on numerous PC platforms unlike some of our competition. This can be significant in terms of technical support issues for vendors using ARJ software to install their software. Technical support costs due to installation software failures add up. This may be the most significant plus of ARJ when comparing archivers. 2) ARJ provides excellent size compression and practical speed compared to the other products currently available on the PC. ARJ is particularly strong compressing databases, uncompressed graphics files, and large documents. One user reported that in compressing a 25 megabyte MUMPS medical database, ARJ produced a compressed file of size 0.17 megabytes while two other very popular archivers produced a compressed file of 17 plus megabytes. Please note that compression results are highly dependent upon the type of data compressed. 3) Compared to the popular archivers PKZIP, LHA, ARC, PAK, and ZOO, only ARJ can archive up to 32,000 files at one time. This enables ARJ to handle very large disk drives. 4) Compared to PKZIP, LHA, ARC, PAK, and ZOO, only ARJ provides the capability of archiving files to multiple volume archives no matter what the destination media. ARJ can archive files directly to diskettes no matter how large the input files are and without requiring EXTRA disk space. This feature makes ARJ (DEARJ) especially suitable for distributing large software packages without the concerns about fitting entire files on one diskette. ARJ will automatically split files when necessary and will reassemble them upon extraction without using any EXTRA disk space. This multiple volume feature of ARJ makes it suitable as a inexpensive backup utility. ARJ saves pathname information, file date-time stamps, and file attributes in the archive volumes. ARJ can also create an index file with information about the contents of each volume. For systems with multiple drives, ARJ can be configured to save the DRIVE letter information, too. Files contained entirely within one volume are easily extracted using just the one volume. There is no need to always insert the last diskette of the set. In addition, the ARJ data verification facility unique to ARJ among archivers helps ensure reliable backups. In addition, only ARJ allows the user to restart an aborted backup at the disk where the failure occurred. 5) Compared to PKZIP, LHA, ARC, PAK, and ZOO, only ARJ provides multiple volume self-extracting archives. 6) The myriad number of ARJ commands and options allow the user outstanding flexibility in archiver usage. No other leading PC archiver gives you that flexibility. Here are some examples of ARJ's flexibility. a) Search archives for text data without extracting the archives to disk. b) Save drive letter and pathname information. c) Re-order the files within an ARJ archive. d) Merge two or more ARJ archives without re-compressing files. e) Extract files directly to DOS devices. f) Synchronize an archive and a directory of files with just a few commands. g) Compare the contents of an archive and a directory of files byte for byte without extracting the archive to disk. h) Allow duplicates of a file to be archived producing generations (versions) of a file within an archive. i) Display archive creation and modification date and time. j) Extract selected files based upon a text search. k) Name archives automatically based upon date or time. l) And much more. 7) ARJ provides ARJ archive compatibility from revision 1.00 to now. In other words, ARJ version 1.00 can extract the files from an archive created by the current version of ARJ and vice-versa. 8) ARJ provides the facility to store EMPTY directories within its archives. This makes it easier to do FULL backups and also to distribute software products that come with EMPTY directories. 9) ARJ self-extracting modules provide default pathname support. That means that you can build self-extracting archives of software directories containing sub-directories. The end user of the self-extracting archive does not have to type any command line options to restore the full directory structure of the software. Moreover, the ARJ self-extractors allow the vendor to build selected command line options into the archive. This greatly simplifies software distribution. 10) The ARJ archive data structure with its header structure and 32 bit CRC provide excellent archive stability and recovery capabilities. In addition, ARJ is the only archiver that allows you to test an archive during an archive process. With other archivers, you may have already deleted the input files with a "move" command before you could test the built archive. In addition, the test feature allows one to select an actual byte for byte file compare with the original input files. This is especially useful for verifying multi-megabyte files where a 32 bit CRC compare would not provide sufficient reliability. 11) ARJ optionally provides a security envelope facility to "seal" ARJ archives with a unique envelope signature. A "sealed" ARJ archive cannot be modified by ARJ or other programs without destroying the envelope signature "seal". This provides some level of assurance to the user receiving a "sealed" ARJ archive that the contents of the archive are intact as the "signer" intended. 12) ARJ has MS-DOS 3.x international language support. This makes ARJ more convenient to use with international alphabets. 13) ARJ has many satisfied users in countries all over the world. ARJ customers include the US government and many leading companies including Lotus Development Corp, Hewlett Packard, and Novell. end document