DMS RIGHT OR WRONG?

Recently I had an entry posted to a guestbook on another web site I run.
The guy said that DMS is outdated, and floppy based machines are dead,
so why does RIP still use the DMS system for archiving disks?

Well, several reasons actually.  DMS is tidy, it archives the entire
disk into one file, and keep all directory structures intact, and the
boot block of the disk.  So the user can uncrunch it, and then it's
an exact copy of the original, and will boot and do everything automatically,
with all the preferences set up.

Plus every one has access to DMS, it's been around so long, that it's
widely in use.  The Aminet did ban it yes, but the way the aminet works
is that it likes to stick to one method of archiving, and DMS would be
stupid for small files, they would need to be uncompressed into one full
disk, and you couldn't put it straight onto your hard disk.

RIPMag isn't designed to be used from hard disk, it doesn't need to be!
There's no point in wasting hard disk space, and eliminating users that
haven't got around to getting a hard disk yet, the more readers the better
after all?  

One comment that was posted to our sister mag's web site said something
along the lines of "if you can use DMS then how hard can it be to compress
the mag using LhA?".  DMS is hard to use if you use the old CLI version,
but there are so many fucking DMS-GUI programs on the Aminet and
CD-ROMs, just download one of them!  Easy as piss.

So we're sticking to DMS for the forseeable future, although there are
some other good similar disk archivers around, they just aren't as widely
in use.

Nick

+RIPMAG+