ARchive HANdler by GEorge Lyapko v1.40


This page contains my shareware MS-DOS archiver, which is based on LGHA(though not compatible), but has compression enhancements (multimedia, english texts, executables compression, etc.) and LFN support.
Compression results are close to the world's best in all categories and are best for uncompressed 24-bit RGB TIFF images among universal archivers
(take a look at Jeff Gilchrist's ACT2 (Archive comparison test) or its russian version.
Comments and suggestions are appreciated.


Main changes since v1.35
Some test results
Download arhangel v1.40 (51kB)
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Main changes since 1.35:

VersionDate of releaseChanges
1.40
final release(?)
18-Jan-2000fixed rare bug: if you try to compress WIN32 DLL's using more than 10000 contexts, it may lead to hanging (thx. Jaime Tejedor Gomez for bug reporting)
fixed very dangerous bug (since version 1.33):
ARHANGEL abcde.lg *.txt (command not specified)
under WIN32 leads to deletion of all *.txt files in current directory
1.40a219-Nov-1999 fixed bug: sometimes ARHANGEL wrongly determines method of compression (leads to worse compression ratio)
1.40a127-Oct-1999 Fully incompatible with previous once!!!
added better and faster english texts predictor
changed arith.coder to slightly faster one
1.39a818-Jun-1999 tuned some mm-files compression
added better english texts predictor
1.39a707-Jun-1999 fixed bug: SFX-files could not extract english texts
fixed bug: some(rare) images could not be extracted
fixed wrong image type determination (sometimes leads to worse compression ratios)
added order-0 compression
1.39a611-May-1999 switch -z[n] changed to -mz[n][f]
added force text compression switch -mtf
added DBIII files detection
slightly tuned 24-bit image compression
improved english texts compression
optimal switch combination now is -mm -mt -mz!
several bug fixes:
extraction after -1 -z may not work
sometimes -mm option usage leads to crash
some files after -mt were not extracted correctly
compression of file with 0 length leads to crash, etc.
1.39a526-Apr-1999fixed invalid ELF-files detection
tuned multimedia compression default
1.39a422-Apr-1999added experimental -mt switch: try english texts predictor (methods 7 and 8). Must help on all english texts, program sources with english comments.
1.39a319-Apr-1999fixed bug:freshen or update with move may cause loss of files
1.39a219-Apr-1999modified -z switch:
-z0 means not use RLE-predictor (overrides default settings)
-z[n] means use RLE-predictor order n+2(by default n=1)
for example, -z3 means to use RLE only if repeated string contains 5 or more characters.
-z1 is used by default on HLP,XLS,DOC,MDB. Default context count in this case 16000
added Linux-executables(ELF) detection
compression of greyscale BMP,TGA must be little better
1.39a108-Apr-1999 added -z switch: use RLE-predictor (methods 5 and 6 in header)
some Microsoft files (XLS,DOC,etc.) are compressed better: -z is used by default
1.3801-Mar-1999 added new predictor for highly redundant 24-bit BMP's
added -mm5 switch to force Intel executables compression
fixed bug: recursion depth was limited only to 3 directories
1.3716-Feb-1999 added new predictor for 16-bit stereo WAV's
slightly improved sound compression
1.3610-Feb-1999 fixed bug: DOS executables compressed with both methods were sometimes larger than compressed with only one method specified
fixed serious bug: some (rare?) WIN32 executables can't be extracted after compression
if you don't specify method of compression directly, ARHANGEL now tries to determine best method on small part of file (not on whole file as previous versions do). Sometimes this may lead to wrong decision. If you want to do this like in previous versions, you MUST specify both methods in command line: ARHANGEL a -1 -2 ...
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