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@@ -6,37 +6,39 @@ 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 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.
+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, chosen to maximize safety and
+interoperability. 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 lziprecover program 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.
+ 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.
+ * 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.
+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.
@@ -44,8 +46,8 @@ 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 (de)compression code from the LZMA SDK
-(Software Development Kit) written by Igor Pavlov.
+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
@@ -54,10 +56,10 @@ users of the most non-free platforms can share lzip files with everybody
else.
-Copyright (C) 2010-2019 Antonio Diaz Diaz.
+Copyright (C) 2010-2021 Antonio Diaz Diaz.
This file is free documentation: you have unlimited permission to copy,
-distribute and modify it.
+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