Re: regular (aka bsd) compress distribution?
On Mon, 20 May 1996, Yves Arrouye wrote:
> Is it impossible to distribute a real compress program? I know there
> may be problems with an LZW patent, but I don't know how they relate
> to the distribution of a compress program for say personal use.
> If this is possible I'll make a package for it.
If we do have a compress package, it must go in non-free.
> If this is really impossible, would it be at least possible for the
> gzip package *not* to provide a compress link (uncompress is okay
> because gzip correctly uncompresses compress'ed files)? It is really
> confusing to be able to run the compress command deep in an app. building
> hierarchy and to see some time after that (in my case) the fonts file
> that have been compressed by this compressed cannot be understood by X
> (starting with mkfontdir).
The gzip package should not provide a compress link. I asked the
maintainer to remove the link some time ago, and he did - it seems to
have crept back in though. I will submit a bug report.
I need a real 'compress' for font file compression too. I suppose I
haven't noticed the bad gzip package because I put a real compress in
/usr/local/bin, and it's ahead of /usr/bin on my PATH.
Steve Early
sde1000@cam.ac.uk
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