From d69516264bbac7997c5ee35237c4af1749e4f8c8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Baumann Date: Sat, 4 May 2024 16:26:20 +0200 Subject: Adding upstream version 1.12. Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann --- README | 66 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 66 insertions(+) create mode 100644 README (limited to 'README') diff --git a/README b/README new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0aa6bfd --- /dev/null +++ b/README @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +Description + +Pdlzip is a permissively licensed implementation of the lzip data +compressor, intended for those who can't distribute (or even use) GPL +licensed Free Software. The name of pdlzip comes from 'public domain lzip'. +Pdlzip is written in C and is (hope)fully compatible with lzip 1.4 or newer. + +Lzip is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the one +of gzip or bzip2. Lzip uses a simplified form of the 'Lempel-Ziv-Markov +chain-Algorithm' (LZMA) stream format and provides a 3 factor integrity +checking to maximize interoperability and optimize safety. Lzip can compress +about as fast as gzip (lzip -0) or compress most files more than bzip2 +(lzip -9). Decompression speed is intermediate between gzip and bzip2. +Lzip is better than gzip and bzip2 from a data recovery perspective. Lzip +has been designed, written, and tested with great care to replace gzip and +bzip2 as the standard general-purpose compressed format for unix-like +systems. + +The lzip file format is designed for data sharing and long-term archiving, +taking into account both data integrity and decoder availability: + + * The lzip format provides very safe integrity checking and some data + recovery means. The program lziprecover can repair bit flip errors + (one of the most common forms of data corruption) in lzip files, and + provides data recovery capabilities, including error-checked merging + of damaged copies of a file. + + * The lzip format is as simple as possible (but not simpler). The lzip + manual provides the source code of a simple decompressor along with a + detailed explanation of how it works, so that with the only help of the + lzip manual it would be possible for a digital archaeologist to extract + the data from a lzip file long after quantum computers eventually + render LZMA obsolete. + + * Additionally the lzip reference implementation is copylefted, which + guarantees that it will remain free forever. + +A nice feature of the lzip format is that a corrupt byte is easier to repair +the nearer it is from the beginning of the file. Therefore, with the help of +lziprecover, losing an entire archive just because of a corrupt byte near +the beginning is a thing of the past. + +Pdlzip is also able to decompress legacy lzma-alone (.lzma) files. +Lzma-alone is a very bad format; it is essentially a raw LZMA stream. +If you keep any lzma-alone files, it is advisable to recompress them to +lzip format. Lziprecover can convert some lzma-alone files to lzip format +without recompressing. + +Pdlzip includes public domain compression/decompression code from the LZMA +SDK (Software Development Kit) written by Igor Pavlov. + +I would not write non-copylefted software unless it is too simple to be +worth copylefting it, but one of the uses of the lzip format is the +interchange of information, and it is therefore desirable that even the +users of the most non-free platforms can share lzip files with everybody +else. + + +Copyright (C) 2010-2022 Antonio Diaz Diaz. + +This file is free documentation: you have unlimited permission to copy, +distribute, and modify it. + +The file Makefile.in is a data file used by configure to produce the +Makefile. It has the same copyright owner and permissions that configure +itself. -- cgit v1.2.3