LIBRARY/LYNX/ARC
   by Howard Tucker

I get a lot of questions about these 3 utilities, so I will try to enlighten anyone who doesn't know their history. 

In the beginning some simple programs were made up of 10 or more smaller individual programs. Some of these smaller programs had names that had nothing to do with the purpose of the overall program and it was very confusing to try and DownLoad only the files you needed for a particular program! These programs are the result of this problem:
 
1. Library -. lbr - This is the original solution! It allowed all the sub programs to be incorporated into a large SEQ file for transfer over the modem. It also saved a dir- ectory file that held all the info and file names of the sub programs and required a library program to break them apart on the other end. SEQ library files begat PRG library files (less error in transmission) and the Library 5.0 program was devised. It would make or break either SEQ or PRG library files and also allowed the use of 2 drives! The main limiting factors with Library were its 1) slow, 2) files could only be 330 blks long, 3) the final file was bigger then the sum of all the little ones. 

2. Lynx -. lnx - To resolve the speed problem of Library and also the length limitations, The Lynx program merely read the disk files to be lynxed and changed the sector links to make one long file of them. This resulted in not having to re-write the files to disk, just modify them. Lynx had a few faults though, 1) it did not like any disk errors and did not always relink properly, 2) since you were working with the original file, if it did not work the first time, it destroyed your file.
 
3. Arc - .arc - Arc recognized the fact that data can be compacted (remove all non- essential data and replace it when you reconstruct the file) This led to smaller files then the original and also extensive error checking. Nothing is free however, Arc is slower then the others and if you Arc a disk side with 2 "----------" lines the program wouldn't UnArc properly. Arc was a complete DOS substitute containing copy, dir, disk cmnds, and a lot of other goodies.
 
4. SFHQ Crunch/Decrunch - The last 3 utilities were for condensing data for easier transmission on a modem. This one took into consideration that you still couldn't transmit PROTECTED data files and maybe size wasn't the only consideration. SFHQ C/D is basically a 3 min single drive nibbler and instead of copying onto another disk, it nibbled the first disk and saved the GCR codes (20% more data then the original) into 4 regular files named SFHQ1, SFHQ2, SFHQ3 & SFHQ4. They could be read normally by decrunch and then nibbled back onto a preformatted disk, thereby reproducing the ORIGINAL DISK! SFHQ works on EA and others that have only 1 file 2 blks long and 0 BLKS left on the disk!
 
 SO, This is where we are at now, The program you use is determined by the speed and reliability you need. Use Library 5.0 on files that end with ".lbr" and use Lynx on files like ".lnx" and of course Arc on ".arc" files. There is an offshoot of Arc called ".sda" Self DeArcing files. These files don't require the Arc program to be used, They include a mini-version of Arc in the file and you load it and run it like a basic program. These files will de-arc themselves BUT because they have to be on the disk to do it, they are again limited in size to 320 Blks. Good Luck, and I hope this helps some of you new modem users to understand the uses of these programs.
  * * KERNAL MASTER * *