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- John of Arc -

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Apr 14, 2000, 3:00:00 AM4/14/00
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I have discovered a few useful things lately that I would like to share:

Micro$'s cabinet file format is a good free way to distribute files.
The compression ration seems to be somewhere between that of pkzip25's
maximum compression and winzip's maximum compression, which ain't too
shabby.

Extract.exe seems to usually be installed on an NT machine, though recent
versions of the file are available in various micro$ packages for download.

The cabSDK download has the cabArc and MakeCab command-line utilities for
creating .cab files, as well as the lib files and some documentation.
There is an explorer extension in the powertoys for viewing the contents of
cab files, though I highly recommend against installing any of the other
powertoys on NT, except for the "command prompt here" powertoy, whose inf
file has to be manually edited for it to work on NT.

I found that one can create a simple self-extracting file by appending
extract.exe to the beginning of a cab file. One can build a cab file with
cabArc or MakeCab and then append the two with a command like the following
(note that the /b (binary) switch is necessary:

copy /b extract.exe + test.cab testSFX.exe

Another really nifty thing is the IExpress.exe wizard, which comes with the
IDK/ODK download (there are two, one is a patch, it apparently takes both,
one has 98 in the title, the other 99).
It creates pretty slick little installers and is extremely configurable. It
looks like a lot of micro$ patches are created with it.

These files are available at various locations on microsoft's site as well
as in the ftp server folder that has such download packages.

Thought you might like to know.

Phil Robyn

unread,
Apr 14, 2000, 3:00:00 AM4/14/00
to
- John of Arc - wrote:

> I have discovered a few useful things lately that I would like to share:
>
> Micro$'s cabinet file format is a good free way to distribute files.
> The compression ration seems to be somewhere between that of pkzip25's
> maximum compression and winzip's maximum compression, which ain't too
> shabby.
>
> Extract.exe seems to usually be installed on an NT machine, though recent
> versions of the file are available in various micro$ packages for download.
>
> The cabSDK download has the cabArc and MakeCab command-line utilities for
> creating .cab files, as well as the lib files and some documentation.
> There is an explorer extension in the powertoys for viewing the contents of
> cab files, though I highly recommend against installing any of the other
> powertoys on NT, except for the "command prompt here" powertoy, whose inf
> file has to be manually edited for it to work on NT.

The 'sendtox' works on NT and is EXTREMELY useful (at least to me): it adds
the following 'destinations' to the Windows Explorer | Right Click | Send to menu:

Any Folder
Clipboard as contents
Clipboard as name
Command Line

>
> I found that one can create a simple self-extracting file by appending
> extract.exe to the beginning of a cab file. One can build a cab file with
> cabArc or MakeCab and then append the two with a command like the following
> (note that the /b (binary) switch is necessary:
>
> copy /b extract.exe + test.cab testSFX.exe
>
> Another really nifty thing is the IExpress.exe wizard, which comes with the
> IDK/ODK download (there are two, one is a patch, it apparently takes both,
> one has 98 in the title, the other 99).
> It creates pretty slick little installers and is extremely configurable. It
> looks like a lot of micro$ patches are created with it.
>
> These files are available at various locations on microsoft's site as well
> as in the ftp server folder that has such download packages.
>
> Thought you might like to know.

Thanks for the GREAT post! Very informative!

Phil Robyn
Univ. of California, Berkeley

Michael Jerkovic

unread,
Apr 15, 2000, 3:00:00 AM4/15/00
to
Just to add your excellent information, there is a nice freeware frontend
to making .cab files called cabpack.

Check out cabpack from :
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/english.htm

You can also download the cab sdk from:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/management/cab/cab-sdk.exe

The version of cabarc.exe included in the SDK supports the LZX
compression method, as does the freeware cabpack. The LZX compression is
much tighter than any form of zip and though it is slow to compress, it
is even faster than zip to uncompress. To use LZX with cabarc you need to
use the the "-m:LZX:21" switch

Can files created with LZX compression can still be uncompressed with
extract.exe or extrac32.exe

Michael


jaucque...@yahoo.com (- John of Arc -) wrote in
<F65A633E2713725D.F008128E...@lp.airnews.net>:

>I have discovered a few useful things lately that I would like to share:
>
>Micro$'s cabinet file format is a good free way to distribute files.
>The compression ration seems to be somewhere between that of pkzip25's
>maximum compression and winzip's maximum compression, which ain't too
>shabby.
>
>Extract.exe seems to usually be installed on an NT machine, though
>recent versions of the file are available in various micro$ packages for
>download.
>
>The cabSDK download has the cabArc and MakeCab command-line utilities
>for creating .cab files, as well as the lib files and some
>documentation. There is an explorer extension in the powertoys for
>viewing the contents of cab files, though I highly recommend against
>installing any of the other powertoys on NT, except for the "command
>prompt here" powertoy, whose inf file has to be manually edited for it
>to work on NT.
>

- John of Arc -

unread,
Apr 16, 2000, 3:00:00 AM4/16/00
to

My experience with the SendToX powertoy is that it seemed to be part of the
icon corruption problem.
Uninstalling it almost fixed the problem (the icons became more
intelligible, but not fixed.).
I don't really understand the mechanism behind the problem, perhaps has to
do with the icon cache file, so I could be mis-placing blame.


Phil Robyn <pro...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote in message
news:38F7A2B7...@uclink4.berkeley.edu...

- John of Arc -

unread,
Apr 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM4/20/00
to
I tested the -m:LZX:21 setting against pkzip25's -max setting (which is
compression level 0).

The cab file was .77 the size of the one created by pkzip.

Michael Jerkovic <ma...@nospam.optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
news:8F177A...@203.2.75.243...

Michael Jerkovic

unread,
Apr 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM4/21/00
to
Agreed. IMHO, this is the best free general purpose compression tool for
Win32. It will also create CAB files with LZX compression.

Michael


jaucque...@yahoo.com (- John of Arc -) wrote in

<9097E243ACB455FB.C93910B9...@lp.airnews.net>:

>http://www.powerarchiver.com/ looks pretty good too.

- John of Arc -

unread,
Apr 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM4/21/00
to
Oh, and my little benchmark test was done with a roughly 7 meg text file.
The LZX 21 setting takes quite a while to compress, though.


- John of Arc - <6...@666.666> wrote in message
news:44EA006834FE6C2F.09A7AD43...@lp.airnews.net...


> I tested the -m:LZX:21 setting against pkzip25's -max setting (which is
> compression level 0).
>
> The cab file was .77 the size of the one created by pkzip.
>
>
>

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