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                 File:  BZip2-0.9.0b-ppc.pkg
           Author:  Michael Griebling (mgriebling@inspired.to)
         Release:  V0.9.0b for BeOS, 31 December 1998
Compatibility:  R3/R4
        Location:  contrib/util
    Description:  Gzip-like utility with much better compression.
             Notes:  Now includes precompiled binaries.
Bzip2  compresses  files  using the Burrows-Wheeler block-sorting 
text compression algorithm,  and  Huffman  coding.
Compression  is  generally  considerably  better than that
achieved by more conventional LZ77/LZ78-based compressors,
and  approaches  the performance of the PPM family of statistical 
compressors.  It is around twice as fast at compression and six
times faster at decompression than other compressors and it
is patent-free.  This archive includes a pre-compiled version for
BeOS.  The x86 version of this utility only has a crude installer
since PackageBuilder for x86 is not yet available.

The command-line options are deliberately very similar  to
those of GNU Gzip, but they are not identical.

WHAT'S NEW IN 0.9.0 (as compared to 0.1pl2) ?

   * Approx 10% faster compression, 30% faster decompression
   * -t (test mode) is a lot quicker
   * Can decompress concatenated compressed files
   * Programming interface, so programs can directly read/write .bz2 files
   * Less restrictive (BSD-style) licensing
   * Flag handling more compatible with GNU gzip
   * Much more documentation, i.e., a proper user manual
   * Hopefully, improved portability (at least of the library)
 
I only ported this package to the BeOS so please direct 
your comments and questions to the original author Julian 
Seward at: jseward@acm.org or visit his home page 
at http://www.muraroa.demon.co.uk/
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