nomarch 1.3 - extract old `.arc' archives.
Copyright (C) 2001,2002 Russell Marks.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.


Description
-----------

nomarch lists/extracts/tests `.arc' archives. (It also handles `.ark'
files, they're exactly the same.) This is a *very* outdated file
format which should never be used for anything new, but unfortunately,
you can still run into it every so often (especially if you mess about
with old CP/M stuff). So nomarch is handy as a way to deal with these
files.

For more on how nomarch works and how to use it, do `man nomarch' once
it's installed.


Installation
------------

Check the Makefile is ok (it should be), then do `make' and (as root)
`make install'.


Why not just use `arc'?
-----------------------

`arc' is non-Free. For a while this didn't annoy me that much, and I
put up with using it because there wasn't really anything else I could
use. But once I realised that I could probably write my own extraction
program, and that some old .arc files aren't likely to go away (for
example, the Walnut Creek CP/M CD-ROM contains well over a thousand),
I thought I'd try writing something a bit more useful than a picture
viewer for once. :-)


Why the name?
-------------

Since there are at least two different programs called `unarc' already
(one is an old CP/M program, the other isn't .arc-related), I had to
pick something a bit more obscure. I considered `arcbgon', but I
thought that was a little tacky. :-) When I noticed that there was a
word looking so similar to `no more arc', I went with that instead,
even if the mundane meaning is a little, uh, grandiose...

(Though it looks like it might also be Spanish for `filename' or
something, which could be a bit weird. Oh well.)


What about Unisys?
------------------

nomarch is capable of reading LZW-compressed files, so it has the same
legal status as a GIF decoder. Even in their current
set-lawyers-to-kill state, I don't think Unisys have a problem with
programs which only *read* LZW. Their patent expires soon anyway, and
once that happens we can all just point at them and laugh. I know I
will. :-)


Contacting me
-------------

You can email me at rus@svgalib.org.


Share and enjoy!

-Rus.
