From e2da2bffe58a76c091d3496bd3ca2d2f18ea2eb6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "B. Watson" Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2025 05:39:38 -0500 Subject: initial commit --- README.txt | 47 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 47 insertions(+) create mode 100644 README.txt (limited to 'README.txt') diff --git a/README.txt b/README.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5062247 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.txt @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +unalf project README. + +The ultimate goal of this project is to reimplement the ALF +compression and decompression algorithms on modern systems aka +Linux and anything else that's POSIX-ish. It's also intended to +be a repository of information about the ALF archiver (and UNALF +dearchiver). + +What's here so far: + +README.txt - you're reading it now. + +TODO.txt - plans for the future. + +src/ - the source. should be able to build with "cd src; make", +followed by "make install" if you want. + +f65/ - "fake 6502" porting layer. Not for the faint of heart. The +unalf algorithm was ported from a disassembly of the 6502 code, using +a perl script to convert the 6502 mnemonics to C macros. This means I +was able to port the code without fully understanding how it works... + +doc/Arcinfo - describes the format of ARC compressed files. The ALF +file structure is almost identical to ARC's. This file was taken from +the arc-5.21q source. + +doc/alf14.atr - the distribution disk for ALF version 1.4, as an Atari +8-bit single-density floppy disk image. This likely isn't the original +distribution disk, but it's the only one I've found on the various +archive sites. + +doc/alf14_doc.txt - the documentation for ALF and UNALF, extracted +from the disk image and converted from ATASCII to standard ASCII. Note +that the filenames are different: LZ.COM for ALF14.COM and DZ.COM for +UNALF14.COM. + +doc/fileformat.txt - documents how the ALF file format differs from ARC. + +doc/review.txt - a review of the original ALFCrunch, from an Atari magazine. + +examples/* - ALF files found in the wild. + +testing/alfls - a Perl script that lists the contents of an ALF +archive. Run it with --help for more information. If you're packaging +unalf for a distribution, there's no need to include this script in +the package: I wrote it for testing purposes only. You can use "unalf +-l" to list .alf files, so this is redundant. -- cgit v1.2.3