Timings for Dicottery v3.04 (Thursday, 9th May 1996)
----------------------------------------------------

Note that though the timings were taken from an old version of Dicottery,
and were taken some time ago, they are still exactly the same, since I
haven't actually changed any compression or decomression code since then.

The table of timings below were taken using !Zap as a test application.
Three packages were timed for both compression and decompression, and the
final archive sizes were also recorded.  The packages used were:

Dicottery (utility)		v3.04
Dicottery (application)		v3.04
ArcFSr/w			v2.52
SparkFS				v1.27

The 'Faster' option was enabled for all of these


		Compress time	Decompress time		Compressed size
		(mins:secs)	(mins:secs)		(original 1474310)

Dicottery	0:25		0:16			820612
!Dicottery	0:35		0:16			820612
ArcFS		2:05		0:40			831477
SparkFS		3:29		0:35			646067


Dicottery uses LZW compression, which is actually a rather nice method.  It's
very fast and produces quite acceptable results.  However, it's quite
obviously beaten on the results side by SparkFS.  I think SparkFS uses LZH
compression, which by its nature is quite a lot better than LZW, but a LOT
slower too.  This explains the extra time SparkFS takes.  ArcFS, however,
erm.... what's going on here?  It compresses as well as LZW, and takes as
much time as LZH.  Is it using a VERY slow LZW algorithm, or is it using a
poor and very inefficient LZH algorithm?  Either way, it produces worse
results than Dicottery on both time and compression rate.  Strange, but
true.

The decompression, however, again shows Dicottery leading the field in terms
of speed.  It's 2.5 times faster than ArcFS and just over 2 times faster
than SparkFS.  *grin*


So: pros and cons (IMHO)

Dicottery:
Pros:	VERY fast
	Good compression
	Self-extracting archives
	Nice user-interface ;-)
	FREEWARE!!!!!!!
Cons:	Not a filing system
	No external decompression as yet (limits archive size)
	Not the best compression ratios

SparkFS:
Pros:	VERY good compression ratios
	Archives are multi-platform
	Filing system
Cons:	Very slow
	Commercial - has a price tag
	Archives don't self-extract

ArcFS:
Pros:	Filing system
	Archives are multi-platform
Cons:	Very slow
	Commercial
	Archives don't self-extract
	Poor compression for its speed



All timings taken above have been as accurate as I could possibly make them
with the equipment to hand.  This equipment was an analogue wrist-watch and
a RiscPC600.  All speed tests were done on the same computer with the same
applications loaded and in the same screen mode, and all with the 'Faster'
option selected.

If you are unhappy about the views expressed in this text file, don't be.
The only actual VIEW that I hold expressed in here is that Dicottery's user
interface looks nice.  Everything else has been written simply from observed
fact and should be taken as such.