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Annotation of coherent/g/usr/bin/gzip/README, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: This is the file README for the gzip distribution, version 1.0.5.
        !             2: 
        !             3: gzip (GNU zip) is a compression utility designed to be a replacement
        !             4: for 'compress'. Its main advantages over compress are much better
        !             5: compression and freedom from patented algorithms.  The GNU Project
        !             6: uses it as the standard compression program for its system.
        !             7: 
        !             8: gzip currently uses by default the LZ77 algorithm used in zip 1.9 (the
        !             9: portable pkzip compatible archiver). The gzip format was however
        !            10: designed to accommodate several compression algorithms.
        !            11: 
        !            12: gunzip can currently decompress files created by gzip, zip (with
        !            13: restrictions), compress or pack. (The SCO 'compress -H' format will be
        !            14: supported in a future version.)  The detection of the input format is
        !            15: automatic.  When using the first two formats, gunzip checks a 32 bit
        !            16: CRC. For pack, gunzip checks the uncompressed length.  The 'compress'
        !            17: format was not designed to allow consistency checks. However gunzip is
        !            18: sometimes able to detect a bad .Z file because there is some
        !            19: redundancy in the .Z compression format. If you get an error when
        !            20: uncompressing a .Z file, do not assume that the .Z file is correct
        !            21: simply because the standard uncompress does not complain.  This
        !            22: generally means that the standard uncompress does not check its input,
        !            23: and happily generates garbage output.
        !            24: 
        !            25: gzip produces files with a .z extension. This was chosen to mimic the
        !            26: 'compress' .Z extension. Using exactly the same extension would have
        !            27: caused too much confusion. Using a completely different extension
        !            28: would have forced changes in other programs such as GNU tar (which has
        !            29: a -z option).  The .z extension is already used by the 'pack'
        !            30: Huffman encoder, but gunzip is able to decompress packed files.
        !            31: 
        !            32: Several planned features are not yet supported (see the file TODO).
        !            33: See the file INSTALL for installation instructions. See the file NEWS
        !            34: for a summary of changes since 0.5.
        !            35: 
        !            36: WARNINGS about broken optimizers:
        !            37: 
        !            38: - on the NeXT, "cc -finline-functions" is broken.  gzip produces
        !            39:   valid .z files but they are much too large because the string
        !            40:   matching code misses most matches. Use "cc -O" instead.
        !            41: 
        !            42: - on the Mips R4000, gcc -O (version 2.3.1) generates bad code, use cc
        !            43:   or just gcc -g instead.
        !            44: 
        !            45: - on SparcStation with SunOS 4.1.1 and the SC1.0 compiler, the optimizer
        !            46:   works up to -O3 but -O4 does not work.
        !            47: 
        !            48: - MSC 5.1 with -Ox and -DDYN_ALLOC generates bad code in inflate.c.
        !            49:   The default is static allocation (no DYN_ALLOC) and -Ox works on inflate.c.
        !            50:   But -Ox does not work on util.c, so you must use -Oait -Gs.
        !            51: 
        !            52: For all machines, Use "make check" to check that gzip was compiled correctly.
        !            53: 
        !            54: Please send all comments and bug reports by electronic mail to:
        !            55:    Jean-loup Gailly <[email protected]>
        !            56: 
        !            57: or, if this fails, to [email protected].
        !            58: Bug reports should ideally include:
        !            59: 
        !            60:     * The complete output of "gzip -V" (or the contents of revision.h
        !            61:       if you can't get gzip to compile)
        !            62:     * The hardware and operating system
        !            63:     * The compiler used to compile
        !            64:     * A description of the bug behavior
        !            65:     * The input to gzip, that triggered the bug
        !            66: 
        !            67: The package crypt++.el is highly recommended to manipulate gzip'ed
        !            68: file from emacs. It recognizes automatically encrypted and compressed
        !            69: files when they are first visited or written. It is available via
        !            70: anonymous ftp to roebling.poly.edu [128.238.5.31] in /pub/crypt++.el.
        !            71: The same directory contains also patches to dired, ange-ftp, info and
        !            72: tar. A patch for tar 1.11.1 is included in the gzip distribution
        !            73: because too many people independently reinvent it (see gzip-tar.patch).
        !            74: 
        !            75: gzip is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
        !            76: the terms of the GNU General Public License, a copy of which is
        !            77: provided under the name COPYING. The latest version of the gzip
        !            78: sources can always be found in prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/gzip-*.tar*
        !            79: or any of the prep mirror sites. An MSDOS lha self-extracting exe is in
        !            80: hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu:/tmp/gzip*.exe.
        !            81: 
        !            82: Many thanks to those who provided me with bug reports and feedback.
        !            83: See the files THANKS and ChangeLog for more details.

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