CRUNCHERS  *******  AN ADDENDUM


                                 by Guy Pond


    Ed: Guy looks at the utility called "PP" which sits on your Workbench
  and makes all PowerPacked files (ie any files crunched with the
  PowerPacker utility) transparent to the system - the upshot being that
  you get the advantage of saved space without the drawbacks of needing
  special programs to run the files. See also "Essential_Utes" in this
  drawer for more along these lines by Ron Coney.


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    In issue 23 of Megadisc is an article entitled CRUNCHERS. This closed
  by recommending the use of Turbo Imploder (Fish 422) for crunching
  executables and Power Packer (Fish 253) for crunching data files.I must
  say I find this arrangement quite satisfactory, especially now.

     Why especially now?

    Power Packed data files can normally only be viewed with specially
  written programmes such as ppshow for pictures or ppmore for text. Now
  this is all well and good but what about all those application data
  files (that is data files utilised by specific programmes such as Deluxe
  Music scores or DPaint brushes and pictures).

     Are not these the real users of space on floppy disk or hard disk?

    Wouldn't it be great if these could be crunched and the programme
  could still read them?

    That's where the "especially now" comes in. On Fish 515 is a programme
  called PP (The Power Packer Patcher) Version 1.0 written by Michael
  Berg. This little beauty patches the system so that it reads Power
  Packed data files as normal DOS files. Power Packed text can be loaded
  into your favourite text viewer or even a text editor because the
  operating system reads the file normally through PP.

    On the Workbench I have packed (icon).info files, font files, Basic
  files and iconx scripts all of which operate normally with PP
  running. The following programmes all seem to have no problems utilising
  crunched data files with PP running:

                                              DMCS
                                              DELUXE VIDEO
                                              DELUXE PAINT III
                                              DELUXE PRINT II
                                              DELUXE PHOTO LAB
                                              DISNEY ANIM.STUDIO
                                              KINDWORDS
                                              PERFECT SOUND

       Some average space savings are-Icons                70%
                                     -DPrintII LoRes       30%
                                               IconGroups  40%
                                     -DPaintIII LoRes      15%
                                     -Anim.Stud. Morgue    40%
                                     -DMCS Music           60%
                                           Instruments     20%


                              DRAWBACKS

    Yes there are a few--

    Doesn't work on WB 2.

    Files take slightly longer to load (I have found this delay to be only
  a second or two).

    With PP running Power Packer cannot tell if it has already packed a
  data file or not.

    If a packed file is changed and saved (eg.editing text)it saves
  unpacked. This is easily avoided by not packing files that are written
  to regularly.

    If PP is not running, Power Packed icons will not be recognised. If
  the disk is not write-protected the info file in the root directory is
  written to so that next time the directory is opened with PP running the
  icons will still not appear as the info file says they aren't there.
  This is easily fixed. Just copy any directory info file to the root
  directory overwriting the existng one.


                                SETTING UP

   The documentation isn't all that great but after some fiddling I
  got the programme running properly. In the PP directory of the Fish disk
  you will find -PP
                -PP.info
                -PP.o
                -ppbase.h
                -Power Packer Library
                -All the docs

     Place -Power Packer Library in the LIBS: directory
           -PP.o & ppbase.h in the root directory
           -PP & PP.info wherever eg.System: directory
           -A command calling on PP early in your Startup Sequence(in
            mine it comes just under addbuffers).
           -Reboot

    In conclusion if you are into crunching to save disk space this
  programme along with Imploder and Power Packer should be all you need.


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